“Like him, I had gotten to meet the important people in government and out. I had helped them, too, contributed not just to their political agenda but also to their own pockets, and they had all responded—the reparations, the lumber concessions, the licenses and franchises and the approval of Congress—even my income tax deductions. I had a battery of brilliant people, most of them lawyers, who knew all the loop-holes, and some of them even proclaimed themselves as nationalists—I lured them, paid them homage, co-opted them, then used them all.”
―
F. Sionil José,
Sins