Love and honesty don't mix.

Being remembered is all anyone can ask from a lost love.

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

Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States initial or baptismal experience in nation-building.

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 us to understand.

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

Literature is an ethical leap. It is a moral decision. A perilous exercise in constant failure. Literature should have grievances, because there are so many grievances in the world.