The Pretenders - Quotes

I bought this book because of a project in school many years back. Our assignment was to finish a book - novel (from a Filipino author) and provide our comments through a term paper. I do not know what made me choose this book, but maybe because of the Title " The Pretenders" that caught my attention. I am glad that I bought this book... and that I am sharing with you the quotes, or lines that I love from the book, that is very meaningful. 

From the Book "The Pretenders" by F. Sionil Jose


"In those days, my only thoughts were of survival... all that occupied me were how to finish school, get a job so that i could earn something to keep myself alive. And keeping alive meant 3 meals a day, a roof over my head that did not leak, a pair of shoes, clean clothes. It is all changed now and those objectives to which i addressed myself in the past are no longer my objective. Now i have raised my objectives a little higher. No one really needs 6 meals a day or 2 dozen pair of shoes, a man can eat only so much, wear so much. so what do i want out of life? I want to be justified..."


"Whatever i do in my heart, i want to do it right, I want to say i did it because it had to be done. I may be proved wrong, but it does not matter, at least to my own self, I must be true. Just a simple fact of human wanting for himself the integrity that everyone desires in his deepest thoughts, in his fondest dreams."


" It is a wonderful institution, but never marry for any other reason except love. Then you won't have regrets. Somehow every problem seems easy to solve. Money is one of the easiest problems to overcome, its when something happens to your inner self - that's something money can't solve."


"I only wish that someday i will be capable of doing something heroic, a deed which would ennoble me not only to myself but most of all to her who has accepted me for what i am. If i could be sure, however, even for just one instant that she chose me because she loved and respected me, then I would know that there is at least one human being whom i have some value, otherwise it is a bleak world indeed where i have paused and the sooner I leave it the better."


"A person is part of a clan, a race. And knowing this, you wonder where you came from and who preceded you; you wonder if you are strong. As you know these who lived before you were strong and then you realized that there is a durable thread that ties you to a past you did not create but which created you. Then you know that you have to be sure about who you are and if you are not sure or if you do not know, you have to go back, trace those who hold the secret to your past. The search may not be fruitful; from this moment of awareness, there is nothing more frustrating that the belief that you have been meaningless."


"A man who knows himself can live with his imperfections; he knows instinctively that he is a part of a wave that started from unnavigable expanses."


"Sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror, any mirror, and you wonderwhy those nose looks as it does, or those eyes - what is behind them, what depths can they reach? Your flesh, your skin, your lips, - you know that the face which you behold is not yours alone, but it is already something which belongs to those who love it, to your family and all those who esteem you."