Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

“They say you start weaving clearer, sharper memories after you've been to a place at least twice. Because then the reflection is more of validation. Let the rush come to you and let your senses be flushed the first time. There will be time for reflection after you've had your fill.”

“Not enough youths fighting windmills. And the old are fearful, jaded or dead. Do not ask me what to do. I am just as cowardly as you. And do not tell me it is enough to speak the truth; that it is bravery enough. Every mountain leveled to the ground, every forest burned, every man, woman, and child who lost their shanties to arsonist fires were defended to the heavens—with words.”

“There are places I cannot visit. Places of unbearable sadness, grief, mourning. They say places are made by people. I say places are defined by the memories they conjure—the lunge of a curse, a shared and shattered history, a loved one drowned and lost in the ocean of forgetting.”

“The battle for hearts and minds begins in the field of memory. And in that field, age has no limit.”

“There are those who live and die giving love, without receiving any. And those who live life just taking, never giving. So the universe gives a boon to a few lucky souls: Who they love will love them back—all their lives.”

“I dream of a morning when Filipinos can wake up from the centuries-long sleep that took them from their past and denied them their destiny as a people.”

“Kindness is fate’s currency for good fortune. And like all currencies, it is without value when faked.”

“Faith is one of only two things in mankind's consciousness that defies discussion. The other is one's marriage.”

“Beware! Balance rules the cosmos. It is not concerned with good or bad. You can be struck by misfortune and be buried in grief if that is what it takes to restore the imbalance you have wrought unto the world.”

“The road to home is when we find our hearts filled with the stories of our people.”

“Fathers are the future's keepers, as it was in the beginning when the only begotten Son became Father to Man and the Great Circle of Father to Son; Son to Father began.”

“Writers, when they’re good, open windows to worlds held precious and priceless by the soul. It is a sad day when they leave the earth, like having the windows shut for good. Where will the world be without good writers?”

“It is the kernel of truth in every story that makes its writing beautiful beyond standards.”

“Today, you can pick your own news. At no time has the world been this compatible with apathy.”

“Guess life is really a road marked by crossroads. It's not the long and winding stretches that will hurt you the most. It's the crossroads. You make a bad choice and it's a tumble and a rumble before you get back on your feet again. But you'll get back on your feet. You'll find yourself. And then you'll be off to your next adventure (crossroads, I mean). In my case, I always had a safety net—my faith in God. But then, I'm more like the millions of simple folk who travel this world.”

“You grieve at first. And then slowly, with the yawning of the years, the disappeared gets scraped from your memory, the way your flesh can be peeled from your limbs. It's very harsh and extremely painful. But it gets done, square inch-by-square inch. Until, the skin that is your memory gets completely scarred and numbed. You live. The disappeared is detached from the dermis of remembering. And that is what is known as moving on.”

“To forgive, you must love the world and everything in it. Anything less is hypocrisy.”

“You can change your life or not change it. It really doesn’t matter in the end.Life as humans live it is too fleeting, too incidental, too minisculefor the universe to keep forever.So just do good to others; be good, allbecause it makes you happy,happy beyond fame, power, andeternity.”

“I once stood on a road and found I had no friends. And I was glad. Better to have no friends than to have people claim they were your friends when they were not. It is a source of strength to come to terms with your right to be alone.”

“I’ve always wondered why women are expected to deny their true age. Why? To be a woman of 50 and up is a badge of triumph—a hard-earned certificate that says you survived the shallowness, the violence, the meanness, and the caprice of a male-dominated society without losing your mind!”