75 Quotes by Miguel Syjuco

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

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

As we all came to discover the limitations of assimilation, we grew closer as a family

The instant before something comes into focus is more exciting than any sharp certainty. Photography, child, is about the passing of time. Capturing is the goal of literature. Timelessness is the task of music and painting. But a good photograph holds time just as a vase holds water. The water will evaporate and the vase becomes a memorial to it. What separates a snapshot from a masterpiece is that the latter is a metaphor of patience...

Freedom is the only thing we must demand in life, for all other good things stem from it

...guilt is often assumed before innocence can be proven.

...just because an ideology dies doesn't mean the value of its ideas is nullified

I learned much from Crispin, though a lot of the things he went on about passed over my head. But he was one of those teachers who, by a kind of osmosis, helped you discover the quantity of areas in your life in which you are still so ignorant as not to have even considered forming a wrong opinion.

He fidgets. Thinks. Observes his fellow passengers. Judges everyone, in the traditional Filipino sport of justifying both personal and shared insecurities.