F. Sionil Jose Quotes
As artists, we must not go down to the level of the masa; we should bring them up, intellectualize our languages, create classics out of our folk arts. We can do this if we are true to our roots and strive for excellence.
Quotes to Explore
-
People are overwhelmed looking up at the Mount Everest of environmental challenges that we face. But you put one foot in front of the other and you recognize that not everyone is Sir Edmund Hillary.
-
The only way to do is just to go for it, otherwise it ends up looking phoney.
-
If you tell me I can't eat something, I'll obsess over it and end up overeating!
-
What's my audience? British society. Am I received relatively well? Yes. Is there within that... if you break it down, challenges with Muslim communities? Of course there are.
-
My roots are in stand-up, and stand-up is very freeing. There's no script involved; you just fly.
-
Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better.
-
Every little girl looks up to her mom so much - that's your first hero.
-
Maybe I'll learn how, but the only thing I can do is turn down parts that would hurt my conscience.
-
I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.
-
Don't take anything from me because I'll track it down.
-
My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.
-
The first thousand days of a baby's life are likely to determine the rest of her life - whether she grows up to be healthy or not, both physically and emotionally.
-
I didn't grow up around all white people; I never wanted to gentrify hip-hop, I've never wanted to speak to an all-white audience.
-
I'm used to packing up and leaving, to condensing myself into a digestible version because people don't have much time to get to know me.
-
It's not the last one. Five's out, six is coming out in November, that's a single chapter, and then seven is the big horrifying one. And I think a couple after that to wrap the thing up.
-
Back when I was growing up, getting caught with a copy of 'Creepy,' 'Eerie' or 'Vampirella' was almost as bad as your parents finding out you were reading 'Playboy.'
-
We did a play of 'Frog and Toad' at my elementary school. And I'm not sure if this is part of the book or it was something that we made up on our own, but I auditioned to play the black hole, which somehow makes sense to me.
-
I grew up in a place where everybody was a storyteller, but nobody wrote. It was that kind of Celtic, storytelling tradition: everybody would have a story at the pub or at parties, even at the clubs and raves.
-
I have a constitutional weakness in which I am very easily distracted by flashing lights. If there is a TV on in the room, I can't have a conversation with you. I won't eat, I won't sleep, I'll just meld with my couch.
-
Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.
-
26 is my favourite number.
-
I brings the ruckus to the ladies.
-
Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today.
-
As artists, we must not go down to the level of the masa; we should bring them up, intellectualize our languages, create classics out of our folk arts. We can do this if we are true to our roots and strive for excellence.
