Maria

“When you're dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“[I]n Filipino society today, the most popular and highly respected people are not the honest intellectuals and artists, but the “respectable” robbers in high public positions; the experts in issuing press releases praising themselves for fictitious achievements; the crooked public relations men who are adept at twisting facts in order to make an idiot appear a genius in public; and the unprincipled politicians who have never heard of decency and honor.
—Part I Pre-Colonial Philippines, The Setting, page 15”
― Teodoro A. Agoncillo, History of the Filipino People

“I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.”
― Celine