I want to write a book that makes people debate, and makes people think, interact with each other and exchange ideas… I write because I’m engaged in this big conversation. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
I treat my writing like a day job, like my main job, even if for many years I was doing other jobs to pay the bills. I worked as a copy editor. I was a medical guinea pig. I was an eBay power seller of ladies’ handbags. I was an assistant to a bookie at the horse races. I bartended. I did anything I could to make ends meet. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
What I do know is that writing is the thing I am best at, and I don’t have the stomach, the ability, the strength or the courage to enter the political arena. And I think writing can be a political act, if only to let those people accountable know they are being watched. Literature can be a conscience. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
I surprise myself that I’m not dead in the gutter somewhere, surprised that I haven’t given up. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
If I were to go back to the Philippines, I would probably end up teaching creative writing at a university. I wouldn’t be able to write, for I would become too jaded to be able to view the existing situation objectively. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States’ initial or baptismal experience in nation-building. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
I have no illusions that my work can rouse the masses to create change, because literature simply doesn’t have that power anymore in my country, if it does anywhere. But I do hope that it can be read by those who are in positions to create change, or that it can at least be part of that dialogue. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
I studied in New York. I fell in love with an Australian-born, half-Filipina girl. So we moved to Australia when she went to her university and I moved with her. We moved to Montreal because she was going to take her year abroad, and I wanted to see if I could keep on writing there. It’s really hard to make it as a writer in the Philippines. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
I read a blog about this young filmmaker in the Philippines who made a short film, and one of the characters in the film reads my novel and then starts discussing the novel with someone. The idea that my book can inspire another artist and be part of that other artist’s work… that’s the reason I write. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
The Miguel Syjuco character is not me. I wanted him to represent my own fears and frustrations and guilt, my own worst tendencies and my optimistic expectations. He’s a cautionary tale for me. But he’s also an examination of the darkest things that haunt me as a person. Miguel Syjuco Read Quote
