Quotes by F. Sionil José

Shit! I shouted at him. Now listen, my friend. The youth have no role. They have no jobs. They have no money. They are not in power and they do not make decisions. If there is going to be a war, they will be dumped into the army. And they will be killed like young men everywhere have been killed - whether or not they believe in the war. Having no role is their role.

The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they dont have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made.

She was benediction, a touch of faith, life itself coursing through my veins collapsed in age and turmoil, and to my fatigued and weary heart, a new and vibrant throb.

Time will come that all that we love, we will eventually lose, and all that we hate we will eventually face.

There is nothing in the world which an artist cannot recreate into something poetic, ennobling. And why do we read these things? They are not facts, they do not improve our business skills, our techniques in manufacturing goods, the management of a home. That is what most of you will be doing anyway. We read these because they teach us about people, we can see ourselves in them, in their problems. And by seeing ourselves in them, we clarify ourselves, we explain ourselves to ourselves, so we can live with ourselves…

We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it.

Literature suffers because writers give their books to colleagues who will then write glowing reviews or saccharine introductions.

Perhaps, this is what love has always been, whether it is for a woman of for a cause -- the readiness to give and not ask for anything in return, the unquestioning willingness to lose everything, even if that loss is as something as precious as life itself.

...the mind can also be kind and does blot out those episodes of our existence that we cant erase in our consciousness.

Only with steadfast memories can we now be strong so as to undo the mistakes of the past, to begin anew and build from the rubble of their betrayal...

Ubi boni, malum prosperat (Where good men are silent, evil prospers)

No man stops caring as long as he breathes. As long as he has a mind and memory, he will care. This is what separates us from the animals. We have feelings.

I am a commuter, not between the city and the village, although I do this frequently; not between the inane idealism of the classroom and the stifling reality beyond it, which I must do for survival and self-respect. I am a commuter between what I am now and what I was and would like to be and it is this commuting at lightning speed, at the oddest hours, that has done havoc to me.

Duty comes in many forms; at times duty to country may conflict with duty to family. Yet, with a lucid mind the guises can be torn away and in the end, duty becomes but one, and that duty is to value justice above everything--to do what is right not because someone ordains it, but because the heart which is the seat of truth decrees it so.

I was shocked at the revelation of her vaulting ambition, her greed. I should have loathed her or, knowing what kind of a person she was, I should have realized the futility of any personal attachment, the impossibility of its maturing into something warm, human enduring. By then, I had known a bit of the prostitutes psychology, the ruthlessness which marked her relationship with men,but I ignored these.

A revolution does not have to eat its children. In fact, it is those who are in power who could very well initiate revolutions. Let us not be old-fashioned and think only of armed uprisings of minorities as revolutions. Any movement that seeks to overhaul established attitudes is a revolution.

You will be surprised how much punishment the human body can take, if there is enough will - or faith.