“He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and smelly fish.”

“I do not write for this generation. I am writing for other ages. If this could read me, they would burn my books, the work of my whole life. On the other hand, the generation which interprets these...”

“When there is in nature no fixed condition, how much less must there be in the life of a people, beings endowed with mobility and movement!”

“If the Philippines secure their independence after heroic and stubborn conflicts, they can rest assured that neither England, nor Germany, nor France, and still less Holland, will dare to take up w...”

“It is probable that England will look favorably upon the independence of the Philippines, for it will open their ports to her and afford greater freedom to her commerce.”

“We young Filipinos are trying to make over a nation and must not halt in our march, but from time to time turn our gaze upon our elders. We shall wish to read in their countenances approval of our ...”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”

“Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.”

“The only honest way to approach the question of whiteness and blackness is to start by accepting that these are arbitrary categories that were invented in the 17th and 18th century in order to just...”

“I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be ...”

“In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”

“There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball. Unfortunately, neither of them works.”

“I'm fortunate to be famous for two rather imposing characters like Magneto and Gandalf.”