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

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

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

“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?”

“...when you hate someone so much, a part of you wants desperately to forgive them. But you can't decide if it's because you really want, or if you just want to stop hating. I still don't know if forgiveness is generous or selfish. Maybe both.”

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

“We referenced fictional characters as if they were people to learn from. As if real-life people were too nebulous, too private and unreal for us to understand.”