Sure, each night we staggered home, unfired, unglazed…

“Here, need blurs the line between good and bad, and a constant promise of random violence sticks like humidity down your back.”

— Miguel Syjuco

We referenced fictional characters as if they were people to learn from. As if real-life people were too nebulous, too private and unreal for…

— Miguel Syjuco

Clichés remind and reassure us that we're not alone, that others have trod this ground long ago.

— Miguel Syjuco

I don't see myself as any different from all the other Filipinos who have gone abroad looking for opportunity, to be a nurse, a…

— Miguel Syjuco

I have to believe that literature can effect change; otherwise, I would have no purpose in my life and would have wasted four years…

— Miguel Syjuco

“We liked to believe there is an alternate world, a better world, populated entirely by characters created by the yearnings of humanity--governing and inspiring…

— Miguel Syjuco

I surprise myself that I'm not dead in the gutter somewhere, surprised that I haven't given up.

— Miguel Syjuco

“A father must take credit for his child, but never a child for his father.”

— Miguel Syjuco

“The little things, you know, eventually become everything.”

— Miguel Syjuco

“A man's life is all he has. When you're old, it's all you'll ever have.”

— Miguel Syjuco

“Let me welcome you to my first country, my Third World.”

— Miguel Syjuco

You can’t bring an unwritten place to life without losing something substantial. Manila is the cradle, the graveyard, the memory. The Mecca, the Cathedral,…

— Miguel Syjuco

When I was young, I spent my days and nights trying to impress future generations. I spent them. They're gone. All because I was…

— Miguel Syjuco

“He fidgets. Thinks. Observes his fellow passengers. Judges everyone, in the traditional Filipino sport of justifying both personal and shared insecurities.”

— Miguel Syjuco

“There are only three truths. That which can be known. That which can never be known. The third, which concerns the writer alone, truly…

— Miguel Syjuco