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.

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

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.

Sometimes one waits too long for the perfect moment before snapping the picture. You never realize that you needed was to change perspective.

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.

Love and honesty don't mix.

It kills me how these days everyone has clinical justification for their strangeness.