It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

an excerpt from J.K. Rowling’s speech at the Harvard University commencement address this month.

Verbosity.

I found this really interesting article by Isagani de Castro, Jr., and an image of a ferocious dragon walking along the isle of the senate hall came to my mind, wearing a conspicuous, predominantly yellow-coloured dress, incinerating her fellow senators with fiery streams of verbose words that only very few people could comprehend. But the vividness of that image gradually fades, and all I see now is that famous lady – infamous to some – full of wit, character and sensibleness.

I extracted some parts of the article.

“I eat death threats for breakfast!”

She’s probably the only Cabinet official who’s been photographed wearing a bathing suit! She was on the cover of Asiaweek magazine, carrying a gun, under the headline: “Top Gun, Watch Out, Bad Guys – Miriam’s Coming.”

She has called a congressman “fungus-faced”, even challenging him to a fistfight.

In her first confirmation hearing as secretary of DAR, Santiago said she felt like “Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom.” In one Commission on Appointments hearing, she was quoted as having said: “I am surrounded by idiots.”

While on an elevator in Congress, Santiago once said: “There’s no intelligent life down there. Beam me up, Scotty.”

In response to public servants who organized a protest after she was named DAR secretary, Santiago said: “Discombobulated moral retardates!”

Throughout her political career, she has made good fun of Congress, the Cabinet (“A cabinet meeting has a decided soporific effect”), public relations firms (“Miserable little intellectual amoeba!”), and many others who have attacked her.

I love her verbosity and her frankness.

She is probably the only intelligent life in Philippine politics.