Miguel Syjuco
Miguel Syjuco
Miguel Syjucois a Filipino writer from Manila and the grand prize winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize for his first novel Ilustrado...
NationalityFilipino
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth17 November 1976
Miguel Syjuco quotes about
long-ago long not-alone
Clichés remind and reassure us that we're not alone, that others have trod this ground long ago.
exercise should-have decision
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.
demand good-things stem
Freedom is the only thing we must demand in life, for all other good things stem from it
regret night trying
When I was young, I spent my days and nights trying to impress future generations. I spent them. They're gone. All because I was deathly afraid of being forgotten. And then came the regret. The worst things of all worst things.
believe years purpose
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.
powerful teaching iraq
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.
men angry-man littles
Angry men have little to live for when their rage becomes ineffective.
objectivity subjectivity reactions
Postmodernism was a reaction to modernism. Where modernism was about objectivity, postmodernism was about subjectivity. Where modernism sought a singular truth, postmodernism sought the multiplicity of truths.
running fear rivers
If our greatest fear is to sink away alone and unremembered, the brutality that time will inflict upon each of us will always run stronger than any river's murky waves.
tyrants humanity tails
The slaves of today will become the tyrants of tomorrow--the proletariat overthrows the hegemon to become the hegemon itself, only to be eventually overthrown by a proto-hegemon that will in turn lose its position. It is this dizzying cycle that keeps humanity chasing the tail it lost millennia ago
home long champion
I'm home and safe and filled with the comfort of being somewhere I've already been. The ruckus of homecoming is brutally enjoyable and everyone makes me feel like a champion. And all I had to do was stay away long enough.
memories cities shopping
You can’t bring an unwritten place to life without losing something substantial. Manila is the cradle, the graveyard, the memory. The Mecca, the Cathedral, the bordello. The shopping mall, the urinal, the discotheque. I’m hardly speaking in metaphor. It’s the most impermeable of cities. How does one convey all that?
home away-from-home honest
To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life.
telling-the-truth martyr changed
History is changed by martyrs who tell the truth.