Like so many poor Ilokanos, my grandparents left their village, for it could no longer sustain them. The Ilocos is a narrow coastal plain where, so often, the mountain drops to the sea. Land hunger had always afflicted the Ilokanos… — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
The past could liberate or imprison - it creates a nation's character, provides the nourishment or the poison a people imbibe in their very marrow. — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
“There is nothing like the land you belong to claiming you back. But everywhere the earth is the same. -Old David” — F. Sionil José Copy Share Image
“Indeed time has that ultimate capacity to render the passions of the past when recalled in the present as no more than grandiloquent gestures.” — F. Sionil José Copy Share Image
Class - or the economic status of individuals - is evident in all societies, some very well stratified by a rigid caste system determined… — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it. — F. Sionil José Copy Share Image
I can imagine the writers of China, England and France, crippled and unsure of themselves when they feel that the ghosts of Confucius, Mencius,… — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
Always remember: the alleviation of poverty is never a political or economic issue - it is moral. — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
In the end, religion teaches us to value truth, justice and freedom. — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
My reading of philosophy and history is desultory; I know so much and yet so little. — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
Life is always sad. That's what makes suicide so tempting because life is all that we really have and haven't. Death makes us equals,… — F. Sionil José Copy Share Image
We recognize the distinctness of Asian art when we turn to its traditional forms, recognize it as Japanese, Chinese and Indian, even Balinese or… — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
“There is nothing in the world which an artist cannot recreate into something poetic, ennobling. And why do we read these things? They are… — F. Sionil José Copy Share Image
All through history, a nation or a civilization's enduring glory is articulated by its mega constructions - the pyramids, the lofty cathedrals of the… — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
