Quote by Bienvenido Santos: “Love is a dangerous thing, a fragile thing, but it is all we have.”

This quote captures the paradoxical nature of love, acknowledging its inherent risks and vulnerabilities while affirming its ultimate indispensability to human existence. It suggests that despite its potential for pain, love remains the most vital and profound aspect of our lives, our greatest asset.

Santos often wrote about characters experiencing loneliness and alienation, particularly in diaspora. In such contexts, the vulnerability and necessity of love—whether romantic, familial, or communal—became a central theme for survival and meaning.

Filipino novelist and short story writer, born in Manila in 1911, and widely regarded as one of the finest Filipino writers in English. His fiction explored the experience of Filipinos living as strangers in America and the painful longing for homeland, drawing on his own years as an expatriate.