Biena Magbitang

“Each person has a literature inside them.”
― Anna Deavere Smith

“But God, I don’t doubt You. I can see You in the morning, in the dew on the grass. Should I worship You in silence, without the obeisance and obedience to Your ministers? Should I stop singing and, within me, let my deeds speak of my belief and gratitude in Your greatness?

The men who taught us of Your presence, who opened the doors of Your temple that I may see the light – they are white like You. Are You then the god of white people, and if we who are brown worship You, do we receive Your blessings as white men do?

I pray that You be not white, that You be without color and that You be in all men because goodness cannot be encased only in white.

I should worship then not a white god but someone brown like me. Pride tells me only one thing – that we are more than equal with those who rule us. Pride tells me that this land is mine, that they should leave me to my destiny, and if they will not leave, pride tells me that I should push them away and should they refuse this, I should vanquish them, kill them. I have known long ago that their blood is the same as mine. No stranger can come battering down my door and say he brings me light. This I have within me.”
― F. Sionil José, Dusk

“It never occurred to me that she might travel from one man to the next to avoid being abandoned. Or to avoid being worshiped like a goddess, a worship she both relished and despised.”
― Alan Lightman, Reunion

“He feels himself falling. He wants to spend every minute with her, he wants to possess her, her purity, her body, her mind. She is what he has been waiting for. Now he can live.”
― Alan Lightman, Reunion