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Filipino Authors Quotes

Browse 33 quotes about Filipino Authors.

Filipino Authors Quotes

“I wished I was blessed with the talent of poetry, of coaxing words into a sonata of the soul where I might sing my pain, my gratitude, my meager, little happiness, into the echoes of the universe and maybe, hopefully, people who feel the same might find this song and find comfort in it and, for an inch of a moment, we'd be together; a virtual community beyond tech platforms, across space and time. But I'm no poet.”

LovePoetrySexRelationshipsConnectionsDatingFilipino Authors
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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“Online dating is not bad. Just tedious and mediocre. It's like going to the karinderya and they've got plenty of ulam (viands) but you don't fancy any of the ulam. Or you see something you like but it's overcooked or has too much oil or too little flavor. Bland and tasteless, a drink that doesn't refresh, a meal that gorges but doesn’t sate.”

LoveSexRelationshipsFoodDatingOnline DatingFilipino AuthorsKarinderya
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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“Order gives birth to constants, and constants yield expectations. When two people have unprotected sex and both are fertile, and the sperm reaches the egg, the woman gets pregnant and a baby is born. There is an order to things and thus, a reasonable expectation can be made. That’s what two decades of school teach you. Do things a certain way, and you’ll get the results you want.” She gulped her beer and sighed. “But life is different. It doesn’t work that way. And dating is the stupidest mechanism of life.” “Why is it the stupidest?” “Because the rules are all fucked up. You do one thing, supposedly the ‘right’ thing, and you get a different result, which is usually no result.”

LoveSexRelationshipsDatingOnline DatingFilipino Authors
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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“The myth of the perfect stranger is something I learned from committed women. Every one of them seemed to hold this deep-rooted belief that someone, some stranger out there, will give her whatever she was looking for. All I had to do was fulfill that fantasy. And when we didn't stay longer than half a day together, the illusion was easy enough to maintain. For my part, I also enjoyed playing the role. It's quite the ego boost to hear a woman, with glazed eyes and labored breathing and numb legs, tell you she's never experienced that. Meanwhile, her boyfriend or husband called in vain, ignored.”

LoveSexRelationshipsDatingCheatingFantasiesFilipino Authors
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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“I was taught to prioritize what's "important"; food, water, children (Being the eldest among our siblings, I was taught to watch out for the younger ones). I was taught that the important stuff wasn't shiny; it involved logistics, practicals, survival. Only the necessary stuff to get by. Style, beauty, self-expression, affairs, superficiality — these are luxuries in my world. I could barely afford to eat lunch, much less buy clothes or get my hair styled in a salon. My family couldn't afford cable TV so I never watched MTV to learn the latest trends. So when I started high school, I had no regard for appearances. This is how I learned, the hard way, that maturity has no place with teenagers who could afford to have fun.”

LoveLife LessonsSexRelationshipsYouthDatingSuperficialitySocial ClassFilipino Authors
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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“I wondered why I pined for women like Kayla. Rich girls have always been out of my league as a kid, so I'm probably compensating in adulthood... Over time, I realized it wasn't just their looks or economic status I wanted. It was the contrast. They are the people who sit comfortably in their cozy worlds and believe they are enough; that all they must do is love themselves for who they are and they shall find friendship, intimacy, love, success, and all the good things people like me must painstakingly earn and seduce for.”

LoveSexRelationshipsDatingSeductionSocial ClassFilipino AuthorsRich Girls
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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“Paz was a few years older than her; looked younger. Hero saw her alone on the veranda, in a black dress patterned with what looked like large sampaguita vines. Her center-parted hair reached just to the top of her ass; it was the most expensive-looking thing about her. She appeared to understand that beauty, at least, was also a kind of wealth.”

BeautyClassSocial CapitalFilipino AuthorsStandards Of BeautyFilipino Culture
Book:America Is Not the Heart
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“Hero had the sense that Pol's Ilocano was stuck in time, that he only wanted to speak it with the people he'd always spoken it to, but even when Hero and Pol spoke in Ilocano with each other in California, there was a playacting stiffness in their voices that hadn't been there back in Vigan, when Hero used to hang on every word.”

LanguageImmigrationFilipinoImmigrant ExperienceFamily DynamicsFilipino AuthorsFilipino CultureIntergenerational Relations
Book:America Is Not the Heart
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“Hero opened her mouth, still unsure of whether to use English or Tagalog when talking to Paz. Paz had a habit of speaking to Roni in a mixture of English, Tagalog, and Pangasinan. It felt like Roni didn't really know the difference between Tagalog and Pangasinan, and moved between the two interchangeably as if they were one language. Nobody had told her otherwise, Hero supposed. But for Hero, listening to the mixture was like listening to a radio whose transmission would occasionally short out; she'd get half a sentence, then nothing -- eventually the intelligible parts would start back up, but she'd already lost her place in the conversation. But when Pol would come in, they'd switch to English, and like adjusting a dial to get a sharper signal, Hero would be able to tune in again.”

LanguageImmigrationFilipino AuthorsThird Culture KidsFilipino Culture
Book:America Is Not the Heart
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“I lived in a big bunkhouse of thirty farm workers with Leroy, who was a stranger to me in many ways because he was always talking about unions and unity. But he had a way of explaining the meanings of words in utter simplicity, like "work" which he translated into "power," and "power" into "security." I was drawn to him because I felt that he had lived in many places where the courage of men was tested with the cruelest weapons conceivable.”

CourageUnionsFilipinoFilipino AuthorsFilipino American
Author:Carlos Bulosan
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“I tried running roads, hung out with road runners. But it's not for me. Being on the road means people will see you, so your outfit matters and you can't blow your nose and wipe it with your hands and brush your hands on the pavement. It's like going to the gym. Sweat, odor, athleisure fashion, being self-conscious—none of those matter in the mountains. You'd slam your shoes across rivers and slap your ass on muddy trails and swing your dick out while running. Pee on the run because stopping to pee takes too much time. You don't bother with trivial matters. Instead, you thank the universe you didn't fall off that cliff or your knees didn't collapse or you finished the race with only calluses, maybe a cut here and there, sore and stiff muscles, but alive and without broken bones. You're in the moment. It's more fun that way.”

RunningLife LessonsAdventureFilipinoJoggingAppearancesFilipino AuthorsTrail Running
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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“We didn't dance together. We danced our own dance, our own space. But we felt the connection. We were three people in communion with the music. The music sang and we sang back, loudly, with our bodies. For a moment, all the superficiality of the world; all its banal cruelty, wokeness, and mundane distractions—everything faded. Our souls reverberated with the purity of music, the release of dance, and the separate yet united communion of disparate people in that single experience.”

LoveSexRelationshipsPartyMusicDatingDanceFilipino AuthorsElectronic Dance
Book:Karinderya Love Songs
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