F. Sionil Jose Quotes

F. Sionil Jose

Profession : Writer

Birth : December 3, 1924

Past middle age, some friends suggested that I should have my eyebags removed, the deepening creases on my face stretched. I often examined my face in the mirror, imagining how I'd look if I followed the suggestion. I decided to retain the old mug. I was too familiar and comfortable with it. And the final hindrance: the cost.

F. Sionil Jose

As artists, we must not go down to the level of the masa; we should bring them up, intellectualize our languages, create classics out of our folk arts. We can do this if we are true to our roots and strive for excellence.

F. Sionil Jose

In the end, religion teaches us to value truth, justice and freedom.

F. Sionil Jose

Indeed, the existence of class, of social hierarchy, is as old as man himself. It prevails in the jungle where strength determines hierarchy; among men, it has also been savagely the same, whereby rulers vested with power through personal combat, or through lineal heritage as in the case of royalty, ravage their subjects.

F. Sionil Jose

From antiquity, Latin died but is still studied in seminaries and elite universities. So did Sanskrit in Asia. iI was replaced by Pali, but even Pali died, too. Linguists say the only ancient language which was resuscitated from the grave was Hebrew of Israel.

F. Sionil Jose

Christianity doesn't demand that we worship our ancestors. If we don't remember our ancestors, then, in all likelihood, we cannot also recall the distant past.

F. Sionil Jose

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 and made them migratory.

F. Sionil Jose

I was born in an Ilokano village called Cabugawan. Most of the houses in it were roofed with thatch, pan-aw, a species of wild grass.

F. Sionil Jose

I tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.

F. Sionil Jose

I regret that I have not written more, shouted louder, and acted out my beliefs.

F. Sionil Jose

What most readers do not realize is that it takes a particular genius to write funny, to satirize.

F. Sionil Jose

Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick.

F. Sionil Jose

At 86, I can easily look back to the last eight decades. Though memory often fails me now, so many images of the past are still clearly polished, and I can yet recall not just an abiding sense of place, but the keen smells, the sensory responses to the events of that past.

F. Sionil Jose

Always remember: the alleviation of poverty is never a political or economic issue - it is moral.

F. Sionil Jose