Manila Quotes

Manila is a city of extremes. The poor are very poor and the rich very rich. A constant reminder to the rich that there is another side to life.

As past presidents of the Liberal Party, we deeply regret and are greatly saddened by the precipitate action by some party officers and members at the Manila Hotel.

Not in this specific form. But all great cities are inhabited by ghosts. A book of this kind could probably be written about Jakarta, Manila, or London by anyone who had a feeling for the invisible truths of those places.

In little pockets of conversation, old men were telling stories of ancient floods. Women were talking of about how much rain there'd been in other towns -- Paragould, Lepanto, and Manila.

I came from the Philippines and Filipinos are incredibly musical. I mean the best cover bands in the world come from Manila!

And the reason I am writing this on the back of a manila envelope now that they have left the train together is to tell you that when she turned to lift the large, delicate cello onto the overhead rack, I saw him looking up at her and what she was doing the way the eyes of saints are painted when they are looking up at God when he is doing something remarkable, something that identifies him as God.

The Marcos era was the golden time for the Philippines. We had the lowest crime rate in the world in Manila and real development then. At last, people are starting to understand this.

I believe that Manila can be a reflection of your state of mind. Being a city of extreme contrasts it's easy to see how it can become an intense personal experience. Manila can be chaotic and spiritual, dirty and divine, gritty and gorgeous all at once. If you don't find beauty and poetry here, you will never find it anywhere.

You can’t bring an unwritten place to life without losing something substantial. Manila is the cradle, the graveyard, the memory. The Mecca, the Cathedral, the bordello. The shopping mall, the urinal, the discotheque. I’m hardly speaking in metaphor. It’s the most impermeable of cities. How does one convey all that?

Customer service, they say, is dead. Actually, it isn't. It's just hiding behind a call center in Manila.

The people want government that works for them at every level. They want good government that begins at their doorstep in the barangay, and does not end before the closed door of a bureaucrat in Metro Manila.

It will be a killer, and a chiller, and a thriller, when I get the gorilla in Manila.

I wrote short stories for seven years and used to mail them out. You couldn't send them by e-mail. I called them manila boomerangs. I'd seal the self-addressed stamped envelope inside an envelope and I'd mail it off, and it would come back six weeks later with a rejection letter in it.

Robert Kennedy identified with people, not data, or institutions, or theories. Poverty was a specific black face for him, not a manila folder full of statistics.

For most men, life is a search for the proper Manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.

And don't worry, if I get thrown in jail in Manila, Beyonce will just bail me out. Sold out night 2 in the Philippines. I love it here!

You are all so lucky to be living here. If I live in Manila I would definitely live in Azure.

My art school rejection letter arrived as a cold manila fist that closed around my fragile hopes ... The fear was practically edible. Nothing would happen unless I get out and make it happen. Then, as if handling me the keys to the jet pack, my dad bought me a typewriter and a taped message to the inside of its case: "Son - the world is waiting to hear from you".

Frazier soaked it all up like a sponge. When they arrived in Manila it was the same story. Ali poured scorn on his opponent. Humiliated him. Joe had the heart of a lion but verbally he was out of his depth when Ali got going. One time, as fight day approached, Ali spotted Frazier on a hotel balcony, grabbed a security guard's gun and fired some rounds at him. Everybody knew it wasn't live ammo but it still startled the hell out of Joe.] Go back in your hole, Gorilla, You gonna scare the people! Come out again and I'm gonna kill ya before time!”

Yes, Manila had its slums; one saw them on the drive from the airport: vast districts of men in dirty white undershirts lounging idly in front of auto-repair shops - like a poorer version of the 1950s America depicted in such films as Grease.

Japanese-owned cargo ship Tsimtsum, flying Panamanian flag, sank July 2nd, 1977, in Pacific, four days out of Manila. Am in lifeboat. Pi Patel my name. Have some food, some water, but Bengal tiger a serious problem. Please advise family in Winnepeg, Canada. Any help very much appreciated. Thank you.

All the fabulous and fearless writers gathered here, whether they are living in Manila, the US, or elsewhere in the ever-growing Philippine diaspora, have a deep connection and abiding love for this crazy-making, intoxicating city. There's nothing like it in the world, and they know it.