“A man's life is all he has. When you're old, it's all you'll ever have.”

“A man with battered hands is shown to be a craftsman only when he puts them to work.”

“Maybe maturity is merely accepting the tally of all the disappearing options of life.”

“Freedom is the only thing we must demand in life, for all other good things stem from it”

“Vilification, by its definition, creates an antagonistic struggle, an us-versus-them mentality, that throws us all into a senseless battle-royale”

“When I was young, I spent my days and nights trying to impress future generations. I spent them. They’re gone. All because I was deathly afraid of being forgotten. And then came the regret. The worst things of all worst things.”

“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?”