Miguel Syjuco

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

— 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

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

— 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,…

— Miguel Syjuco

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

— Miguel Syjuco

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

— Miguel Syjuco

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

— Miguel Syjuco

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

— Miguel Syjuco

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

— 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…

— Miguel Syjuco

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

— 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…

— Miguel Syjuco

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

— 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…

— Miguel Syjuco

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

— Miguel Syjuco

“...guilt is often assumed before innocence can be proven.”

— Miguel Syjuco

The immigrant experience in 'Ilustrado' was only a small part of what I intended to be a broader look at the Filipino…

— Miguel Syjuco

“Maybe maturity is merely accepting the tally of all the disappearing options of life.”

— Miguel Syjuco

“All of humanity's crimes,' Salvador said... 'are only degrees of theft.”

— Miguel Syjuco

“My absence was gradual, until one day it was complete.”

— Miguel Syjuco

Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism. Where modernism was about objectivity, postmodernism was about subjectivity. Where modernism sought a singular truth, postmodernism…

— Miguel Syjuco

“And yet,from the air you think her peaceful and unflustered. On the ground is a place tangled with good intentions and a…

— Miguel Syjuco

Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get.

— Miguel Syjuco

I read a blog about this young filmmaker in the Philippines who made a short film, and one of the characters in…

— Miguel Syjuco

Touching on universality is an important part of effective storytelling, but the problem with cliches is that they are tired and dull.…

— Miguel Syjuco