F. Sionil Jose

All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory. ”

I do not want to be bored listening to music that is muffled and known only to the poet himself. ”

A weak people and its equally debilitated leaders are bludgeoned by history. It maims them into the cripples that they are meant to be. ”

I can't understand Urdu, Bahasa or Russian, but when the Pakistani Faiz, the Indonesian Rendra and the Russian Rosdentvensky declaim, I can feel the living throb of rhythm and music, the warmth and passion of their poetry, as do the hundreds, not a mere roomful, of poetry lovers in the audience. ”

Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief - everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies. ”

The heart of the theater is the play itself, how it dramatizes life to make it meaningful entertainment. To achieve depth and universality, the playwright must subject himself to intense critique, to know human character and behavior, and finally to construct art from the most mundane of human experience. ”

Literature - Eastern and Western - abounds with stories, myths, legends about the search for youth, for eternal life. ”

The literary depiction of life and its moral dilemmas compel us to use our conscience, to make those infallible distinctions between right and wrong. ”

For them who delay aging, who infuse decrepit bodies with youth and beauty - they must rejoice in the fullness of their deeds. ”

The influence of teachers extends beyond the classroom, well into the future. It is they who shape and enrich the minds of the young, who touch their hearts and souls. It is they who shape a nation's future. ”