Carlos Bulosan QUOTES

1 " I lived in a big bunkhouse of thirty farm workers with Leroy, who was a stranger to me in many ways because he was always talking about unions and unity. But he had a way of explaining the meanings of words in utter simplicity, like "work" which he translated into "power," and "power" into "security." I was drawn to him because I felt that he had lived in many places where the courage of men was tested with the cruelest weapons conceivable. "

― Carlos Bulosan

2 " Yes, I will be a writer and make all of you live again in my words. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

3 " The human heart is bigger than the world. "

― Carlos Bulosan

4 " You ...see us ...and you think you know us, but our outward guise is more deceptive than our history. "

― Carlos Bulosan

5 " We march on, though sometimes strange moods fill our children. Our march toward security and peace is the march of freedom—the freedom that we should like to become a living part of. It is the dignity of the individual to live in a society of free men, where the spirit of understanding and belief exists; of understanding that all men, whatever their color, race, religion or estate, should be given equal opportunity to serve themselves and each other according to their needs and abilities.

But we are not really free unless we use what we produce. So long as the fruit of our labor is denied us, so long will want manifest itself in a world of slaves.

It is only when we have plenty to eat—plenty of everything— that we begin to understand what freedom means. To us, freedom is not an intangible thing. When we have enough to eat, then we are healthy enough to enjoy what we eat. Then we have the time and ability to read and think and discuss things. Then we are not merely living but also becoming a creative part of life. It is only then that we become a growing part of democracy. "

― Carlos Bulosan

6 " We do not take democracy for granted. We feel it grow in our working together—many millions of us working toward a common purpose. If it took us several decades of sacrifice to arrive at this faith, it is because it took us that long to know what part of America is ours.

Our faith has been shaken many times, and now it is put to question. Our faith is a living thing, and it can be crippled or chained. It can be killed by denying us enough food or clothing, by blasting away our personalities and keeping us in constant fear. Unless we are properly prepared the powers of darkness will have good reason to catch us unaware and trample our lives. "

― Carlos Bulosan

7 " We ...recognize the forces which have been trying to falsify American history—the forces which drive away many Americans to a corner of compromise with those who would distort the ideals of men that died for freedom. "

― Carlos Bulosan

8 " If you want to know what we are, look at the men reading books, searching in the dark pages of history for the lost word, the key to the mystery of the living peace. We are factory hands, field hands, mill hands, searching, building and molding structures. We are doctors, scientists, chemists discovering and eliminating disease, hunger and antagonism. We are soldiers, Navy men, citizens, guarding the imperishable dreams of our fathers to live in freedom. We are the living dream of dead men. We are the living spirit of free men. "

― Carlos Bulosan

9 " We have been marching for the last one hundred and fifty years. We sacrifice our individual liberties, and sometimes we fail and suffer. Sometimes we divide into separate groups and our methods conflict, though we all aim at one common goal. The significant thing is that we march on without turning back. What we want is peace not violence, We know that we thrive and prosper only in peace. "

― Carlos Bulosan

10 " This is the beginning of your life in America,” Julio said. “We'll take a freight train from Sunnyside and go to nowhere.” “I would like to go to California,” I said. “I have two brothers there—but I don't know if I could find them.” “All roads go to California and all travelers wind up in Los Angeles,” Julio said. “But not this traveler. I have lived there too long. I know that state too damn well….” “What do you mean?” I asked. Suddenly he became sad and said: “It is hard to be a Filipino in California. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

11 " It is but fair to say that America is not a land of one race or one class of men. We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat, from the first Indian that offered peace in Manhattan to the last Filipino pea pickers. America is not bound by geographical latitudes. America is not merely a land or an institution. America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world. America is a prophecy of a new society of men: of a system that knows no sorrow or strife or suffering. America is a warning to those who would try to falsify the ideals of freemen. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

12 " This is the greatest responsibility of literature: to find in our struggle that which has a future. Literature is a living and growing thing. We must destroy that which is dying, because it does not die by itself. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

13 " America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

14 " This is also what critical reading of our histories makes possible: we cannot repair what we cannot reconcile; we cannot truly know what we will not truly see. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

15 " America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate—We are America! "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

16 " I remembered all my years in the Philippines, my father fighting for his inherited land, my mother selling boggoong to the impoverished peasants. I remembered all my brothers and their bitter fight for a place in the sun, their tragic fear that they might not live long enough to contribute something vital to the world. I remembered my own swift and dangerous life in America. And I cried, recalling all the years that had come and gone, but my remembrance gave me a strange courage and the vision of a better life. “Yes, I will be a writer and make all of you live again in my words,” I sobbed. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

17 " I do not remember all that Miss Mary Strandon said to me in parting. But I remember her saying that she would like me to come someday to her home town of Spencer, Iowa. She told me that the trees there were as luxuriant as in Baguio. Fifteen years afterward I went to Spencer, hoping to find her. But she had been dead for more than ten years. I wrote her name on a copy of my first book and donated it to the local library. I think she would have been happy to know that; I would someday write a book about her country. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

18 " Critical reading is a civic act; it’s the kind of reading that asks you to be both sharp and vulnerable to both the world of the book and the world the book emerges from; the kind of reading that asks you to bear witness to the things in a book that speak low and deep to some low and deep part of you, which might not always say easy or comforting things. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

19 " Critical reading returns you to your life with renewed eyes; it deepens the world for you, inasmuch as it deepens you for the world. "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

20 " Do you remember how old you were when you first read a book that had a character who looked and lived like you in it? "

― Carlos Bulosan , America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

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