Life is always sad. That's what makes suicide so tempting because life is all that we really have and haven't. Death makes… — F. Sionil José Copy Share Image
At 86, I can easily look back to the last eight decades. Though memory often fails me now, so many images of… — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found. — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
The Japanese covet important symbols - their heroic past as enshrined in Yasukuni, the Imperial family which has never been sullied by… — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
I envy those Hindus and Buddhists who have in their religion philosophy and ancestor worship which build in the believer a continuity… — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
Christianity doesn't demand that we worship our ancestors. If we don't remember our ancestors, then, in all likelihood, we cannot also recall… — 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… — F. Sionil Jose Copy Share Image
Past middle age, some friends suggested that I should have my eyebags removed, the deepening creases on my face stretched. I often… — 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
