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“Her firm belief was that things would be better in society if there was a periodic ‘social cleansingâ€� to eliminate those influences that are considered unsavory. She sounds like she’d be fun at parties,â€� the officer joked.”
― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“Shuller was thankful they’d found sheets for those who had been killed, but just the knowing who was under the sheet ... well, he wasn’t sure if that was still a kindness or made it worse for the imagination.”
― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“Oh yes, how terrible for you. Having to have a staff wait on you, having the world for yours to take due to being born into privilege and being so unbelievably bored at the prospect of living a life of leisure thanks to the genetic lottery you won that you threw it all away for a pursuit of a career that, quite frankly, is not your strong suit, shall we say. Yes. Poor little rich girl. Everything you have now, everything you had lost and walked away from, is of your doing. You just had to maintain a life of decorum. Sorry if the expectations of being proper were unattainable for you. I hadn’t expected that to be outside of your reach.”
― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“Each time she glanced in his direction, she was struck with the fact that this measly slip of a man had had the power to destroy her husband’s career. Every bit of loathing she had for him was there on display for Willum to take in.”
― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“Ma’am.â€� The officer was already tired of the haughtiness of Ms. Headstrom. “You specifically sought out this particular group of people, who all had a particular criterion of being in the press for unfavorable reasons. Is that correct?â€�
“Well, not all of them were for unfavorable reasons,� she tried to rationalize. “Some were associated with an unfavorable reason. It was a themed party. That was the theme. That was the only reason. Why else would I have brought them all to the house for a dinner?�
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― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“Each group seemed to be collected in front of two doors, each looking at the other, and no one looking at Mica. There was one person looking at Mica, but she was unaware that she was being watched.”
― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“It appeared to be from behind us. We were all turned and listening to Barry as he was in the midst of a rant and had all our attentions. The gun shot seemed to come from the area of the foyer.”
― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“And I’m a sheriff,â€� Shuller jumped in. Willum’s demeaner faltered for a moment. It was so minor that it could have been missed by most, but Shuller caught it. The ever-so-slight blanching at the mention of law. Shuller was able to perceive the slight discomfort which concerned him. It was not a good sign to Shuller when someone bristled at the idea he was a sheriff. It never boded well for the type of person he was dealing with if the fact he was a man of law was what made them act oddly.”
― Kathleen Lopez, Thirteen for Dinner

“Tea no more! Down with bustles!”
― Nancy Moser, Masquerade

“A once-high society lowers itself when having little to no respect for even a decent honesty, and it's at its lowest when, at last, truth is frowned upon.”
― Criss Jami

“On days her spirits are low, like now, or between ballet seasons, when she has time to think about herself outside of the roles she plays, when she is not Odette in Swan Lake or Clara in The Nutcracker, she finds her feet reason enough to doubt the grace for which she is applauded when she spins on the tips of her toes.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“The show is over, but she cannot bring herself to even slow down. The more she thinks about quitting, the louder the applause, the longer the standing ovations, and the higher the expectations go.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“In the nonprofit world, the more a charity gala looked like a party where a supervillain might take the guests hostage, the more of a success it was.”
― Alisha Rai, Hurts to Love You

“I mean exactly. I'm worried about that child. You want your child to be wild, you bring her to the jungle.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“Not the Manila you see on CNN or BBC, whose interest in Manila or the Philippines is mostly limited to its poverty or its morally bankrupt political system or its many Climate Change-induced disasters.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“t must be irony that, now that he is back in Manila, poverty is almost a complete stranger. Even his Mamita, the woman who has taken care of him since he was born and who took personal care of his mother before him, is not that poor, at least not desperately poor, in Miko’s estimation.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“This is not New York. He does not need to fold in on himself to fit in a studio. He does not need to fend for himself. He does not need to go home to a dark place, where he needs to switch on the light upon arrival every night, and where no hot, homecooked meal awaits him. This is Manila, his home of luxury.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“He took pleasure in scandalizing the moralists in his circles, arriving at soireés in the arms of paid escorts whom he dressed up for the occasion not exactly to make them blend in but to make them stand out.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“When we do not know who we are, how do we relate to other nations as their equal, how do we know what our fair share is in international trade, how do we even know what’s best for us come election time.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“The buzz about the ball has risen to such a fever pitch that two weeks before the event those who had not received an invitation booked themselves a last-minute flight out of town—to Balesin or to Amanpulo or to Pangulasian in El Nido—or out of the country, Hong Kong or Singapore or as far as Tokyo.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“The pundits say that Manila! Manila! is the unwitting revenge of high society, under a new republic whose leader won the presidential elections by a landslide on a platform of social equality and poverty alleviation.”
― A.A. Patawaran, Manila Was A Long Time Ago - Official

“I knew that in a few minutes I'd have to enter a happy, unthinking world. A world that revolved around the solid pedestal of money, with an optimistic view I knew something about from listening to the conversations of my friends.”
― Carmen Laforet, Nada

“Everything will be okay in the
end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”
― Harlow James, Never Say Never