“And yet,from the air you think her peaceful and unflustered. On the ground is a place tangled with good intentions and a tyrannical will to live.”

“Because falling, if you live in the moment,is really just flying, at least until you read the ground”

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

“Clichés remind and reassure us that we're not alone, that others have trod this ground long ago.”

“To be an honest writer, you have to be away from home, and totally alone in life.”

“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?”

“Angry men have little to live for when their rage becomes ineffective.”