People From Manila

"I usually start with a character that interests me, or with some event that haunts me. I ask myself, "From whose point of view I am telling this story?" Some voice starts taking shape in my head, a certain way of talking, a tone. At its best the process is instinctive, organic, and musical. The story starts writing itself. (Callaloo, Fall 2008)"

"(KASJ: Could you have written this book in any other place? The whole thing is about the Philippines.) JH: Maybe the question is really: Why does a certain place have a pull on a writer? People probably do wonder that about me. I've lived in the US for over 30 years. Why do I keep writing stories that are largely set in the Philippines? C'mon! The culture is just so rich and has so much happening in it. To me it's a treasure trove. Lush, stark, abundant, untainted, polluted. The whole world has gone through there: Arabs, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Brits, Americans. The Philippines has everything. The supernatural, the superreal, and the surreal. It's about grim reality, too. It's about faith in a larger being, a deep, ingrained spiritual faith. It's about strength and courage, but also about corruption, humor and generosity. I mean, God! You almost don't have to make anything up...Everything there is rife with, you know, dramatic conflict, tension, and romance. It's an extravagant culture bursting with extravagant emotions. It also is the place where I grew up, so it will always have real and lasting meaning for me. (The Women's Review of Books, March 2004)"

"I don't write with "lessons" in mind. I just hope my readers are absorbed by the story, that they enjoy the read, and that the novel raises some provocative questions. (The Women's Review of Books, March 2004)"

"(KASJ: What kinds of real-life events are useful for fiction?) JH: All of it is useful. It's very personal what will move one artist and what will move another. I think you can find [art] in both the smallest thing and in the most horrific catastrophe. It could be something as simple as the mystery of seeing someone enter a room, down to a major historical event like the Tasaday controversy or the Vietnam War. Everything is fodder. (The Women's Review of Books, March 2004)"

"if you get too specific the timelessness is lost. (1991)"

"It’s best if you go out in the world knowing more than one language, I don’t care what the language is. It’s good for your brain to dream in another language. It gives you a clue, another perspective, a way of understanding, some compassion for other people—even if it’s just because you know how to joke in another language. (1991)"

"I'm not a writer who works off an outline. I don't do file cards. Some writers know where they're going when they sit down to write a novel. I know there are certain things I want to include, but I'm character driven and if the characters keep moving and living and growing on me, the story unfolds. It's like a puzzle which starts falling into place. But I never know where I'm going when I start."

"If I were to write with that agenda in mind, then I'd destroy the writing. No, I write really because I have to and if the writing also destroys some of those myths and subverts forms and makes people question the very idea of the writer, the woman, the Filipino American, the whatever, great! (INTERVIEWER: Where does art have to come from to accomplish those kinds of ends? If you set out directly to accomplish them, you probably wouldn't have writing that is, in your opinion, worth reading? So, where does it have to come from?) JH: It has to come from the deepest, deepest, deepest insides of your soul. And it's got to be brutally honest. It's like pornography. You know it when you are doing it and you know when you're bullshitting. You know when you're being self-conscious and contrived and forcing something to be there because you want to make sure that people get the point. You know when that's happening. But if you just really listen to yourself and to your characters, you don't go for the easy stuff."

"A lot of novels about the Philippines or set in the Philippines don't cut it at all because they don't capture the crazy quilt atmosphere and the hybrid ambiance that occurs twenty-four hours a day. Things happening all the time, and noise and crowds and beautiful animals and amazing flora. At the same time, pollution and urbanization and sophistication and, you know, the jungle. How do you do all that? You can't tell it in a traditional way because the language dies. And also the music of the language itself, the music of the streets. How do convey that chaos? So, once I decided to go with it as I found it, I relaxed because at the risk of alienating some readers, this was the way the novel had to be presented."

"I have been definitely influenced more by Latin American writers than by any other type of writer. They are very close in terms of voice their humor, their fatalism, their... well, that overused term "magical realism." It's a wonderful term that's just been used so much we don't know what it means anymore. But the way they can use language and visions and surrealism without being corny, and the humor that's always there, is very close to a Filipino sensibility. More so than-now this is a completely personal perception-other writers from Southeast Asia."

"What made me want to write a novel was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Garcia Marquez. I was turned on to that by a friend from Mexico who gave me the book. It was like Holy Communion or something. I said, "Yes!" Here is a novel that reads so lyrically and so poetically, and yet is a novel. It's a wonderful story. You want to know what happens to these people. And at the same time I saw the connection for me. It was like the Philippines was something I was carrying around and I didn't know what art form it would take to convey the story I wanted to tell, and I read that book and said, "That's it. One day I'm gonna do it.""

"For other people perhaps it was something else that brought them to certain conclusions about their lives and their identities. But, for me, film was truly one of the more powerful sources of entertainment, enlightenment, disillusionment. So, I use it a lot. In the writing of Dogeaters, especially, the movies were there because they were absolutely part of the fabric of my memory. Once I found that key, all the doors started swinging open in my imagination."

"Kahit maging sanglibo man Ang buhay n'yaring katawan Pawa kong ipapapatay, Kung inyong pagpipilitang Si Kristo'y aking talikdan."

"Itinuturo ng katwiran na tayo’y magkaisang-loob, magkaisang-isip at nang tayo’y magkalakas na maihanap ang naghaharing kasamaan sa ating Bayan. Panahon na ngayong dapat na lumitaw ang liwanag ng katotohanan; panahon ng dapat nating ipakilala na tayo’y may sariling pagdaramdam, may puri, may hiya, at may pagdadamayan."

"Itinuturo ng katwiran, na wala tayong iba pang maaantay kundi lalu't lalong kahirapan, lalu't lalong kataksilan, lalu't lalong kaalipustaan at lalu't lalong kaalipinan. Itinuturo ng katwiran na huwag nating sayangin ang panahon sa pag-asa sa ipinangakong kaginhawaan na hindi darating at hindi mangyayari … Itinuturo ng katwiran ang tayo’y magkaisang-loób, magkaisang-isip, at akala at nang tayo’y magkalakas na maihanap ang naghaharing kasamaan sa ating Bayan."

"Ibigin mo ang iyóng Bayan nang sunód kay Bathalà, sa iyóng kapurihan, at higít sa lahat sa iyong sarili."

"...the greatest Filipino sculptor, in or outside the Philippines"

"...we were not aware of this and the seditious character of the poem (Balagtas' Florante and Laura) until Epifanio de los Santos discovered and pointed them out"

"He was undoubtedly the best critic, writer and biographer that the golden age of literature in our country have ever produced. An artist by temperament, he was a scholar in the truest sense, interested and well versed in all branches of human learning, not in the manner of present-day specialists who confine themselves in the limited branches of their chosen fields. He was also recognized as the most authoritative historian and interpreter of fruitful and transcendental events in our epoch, a researcher of the first order, a collector of rare and antique objects that are landmarks of Philippine culture. None could equal him in rigidness and perseverance and study of our past , even in search of our wealth of relevant and important data that enrich the sources for the study of national history and literature. He was also recognized as the foremost Filipino scholar of his time. -Rafael Palma"

"Epifanio de los Santos, greatest connoisseur of Filipiniana, foremost Filipino historian and biographer, and the first Filipino to become member of the Spanish Academy of Letters."

"He was, in the early twentieth century, the country's most eminent biographer and literary scholar."

"The foremost literarian in the Philippines. - Claro M. Recto."

"Known as supreme in the Philippine literary world, the keenest critic and writer we ever had.- Dr. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera."

"He was a master of humor. He believed that humor is the test of the natural, of the sensible, of the truth. To him most persons who have no sense of humor are generally absurd."

"He taught us by example to place little emphasis on personal material gain...his aim was to bequeath to posterity the riches of his brain and the wealth of his soul."

"..he brought a sanity of perception and appraisal to his criticism of our prose productions, our plays, our linguistics, and what ever in letters that touches vitally the life of his people. The country has lost a truly great man in the death of Epifanio de los Santos Cristobal. He wrought for himself a destiny of glory which is the glory of his native land."

"He had a passion for historical accuracy, saying that it is useless to write when one is not sure of the facts. It will only be adding confusion to an already confused world."

"Before the conquest, the Filipinos had a literature written in characters of their own, and its manifestation in verse constituted of maxims, proverbs, boat-songs, nuptial-songs, war songs, love-songs, and the like."

"...as regards to teaching of languages, he (Rizal) advocated, among other things, the study of Tagalog. Since he was eight years of age, Rizal championed his native tongue as a language of its own pure type, noble and exalted""

".was one of the most brilliant students of the Ateneo Municipal as far as humanities and natural and mathematical sciences are concerned"

"Among the new bibliographers, Sr. Epifanio de los Santos, a young scholar with great culture, stood at the head; he possessed more than 2,000 titles, some of them were very rare."

"To evaluate the greatness of the late director of the Philippine Library and Museum is utterly impossible. An accomplished musician, the foremost scholar in the land, a collector of the first rank, at home among the great masters of foreign tongues, Epifanio de los Santos leaves behind him a record of service and achievement that would be difficult to equal."

""If you want to do something great in the world, do not get married, remain single... One may get married after he had accomplished something great in this world." Yet this great man who advised against marriage, was the happiest of men at the fireside of his family."

"It is not strange that Menendez Pelayo should discover the Filipino scholar because in brains and heart they were the same."

"He was both great, and very, very human."

"Generally regarded as the foremost scholar, Don Panyong is equally deserving of popular encomium for the singular distinction which he has achieved in several other fields of human endeavour."

"the esteemed ornament of Filipino Culture."

"Greatest of the last generation's men of letters in this country. - A. V. H. Hartendorp"

"To be a worthy biographer of Senor de los Santos you would have to be his equal, so that remains a thing undone perhaps undoable, but that admiration he feels for his countrymen---the very best--other feels for him and they have crowned him as a leader in the path of scholarship."

"On more than one occasion when reading Epifanio de los Santos, one reads Don Juan Valera."

"( As Assistant Director of Technical Census)...He exhibited his astute powers of observation and astonished all his associates with that endurance for continued effort seldom equalled but never surpassed by men of even younger years."

",,, powerful intelligence, a formidable receptacle of culture and gifted with words."

"He was the first highly educated and cultured Filipino to direct he attention of his countrymen to their illustrious men, and to their art, literature, poetry and music."

"Great among the Great Filipino Scholars.. He was recognized as the foremost scholar of his time."

"One of the best product of the 20th century Renaissance in Philippine arts and letters, Don Epifanio de los Santos y Cristobal exemplified the intellectual gentlemen whose passion for knowledge and the arts paralleled his life long existence."

"Epifanio de los Santos was a genius, with all the great spontaneity and fire, and all the almost analyzable complexity of such a spirit. … His scholarship was profound. … Yet he was no mere pedant. He was never solemn. He was too wise to take life too seriously. He was always jovial and good company. He was something of a sensualist and liked good food and drink. But he had moments of sadness, and there were times when he drank not for pleasure, but for surcease."

"All of us here are servants of the reading public. I am the head of the servants and I must show that I know better than any of the servants where the materials are found. I want to show that our service here is efficient and that we are really working to serve."

"There is nothing more regenerating than music."

"( ...philosophy is more often the systematization of the prejudices of philosophers than the systematization of nature.) Distrust all generalizations: stick to the concrete."

"What I want to impress on our youth is the necessity of thoroughly preparing themselves for their life's work. As a rule they bluff their way through life , pulling plums out of life's pudding by hook or by crook. They seem to hold the notion that knowledge is not essential to great achievements as courage. They overvalue courage forgetting that without knowledge it is only recklessness...Less bluff, more study."