I love writing dialogue, and I think a lot of my writing is visual and very cinematic.

I'm preparing for a multimedia theater piece, Airport Music, that's coming up in New York City.

My identity is linked to my grandmother, who's pure Filipino, as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that's how I identify.

I don't believe in sampling some Tibetan music just to make it sound groovy, but you do your homework, you understand what you're doing with it.

Don't say Fili, sister. Say Pili. In Tagalog, pili means to choose. Pino means fine. Pilipino equals 'fine choice.

Adaptability is the simple secret of survival.

Everything matters. Time is precious.

Hybridity keeps me from being rigid about most things. It has taught me to appreciate the contradictions in the world and in my life. I scavenge from the best.

Life is not simple, and people can't be boxed into being either heroes or villains.

[On The Philippines:] ... eighty dialects and languages are spoken; we are a fragmented nation of loyal believers, divided by blood feuds and controlled by the Church.

I'm an underdog person, so I align myself with those who seem to be not considered valuable in polite society.

I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.

In expression of Fatherhood I evolve to become - all I was destined, to be.

Nothing fruitful ever comes when plants are forced to flower in the wrong season.

If you write a song, and you go into a restaurant, and there's a guy with a piano singing and he's playing piano, singing your song, or you hear it at a wedding or at an airport... it's fun!

The towers fell, and the first thing that went through my head was my dad's voice: 'Well, you brought a new life into the world, and the world's over. Nice timing, numbnuts!

With media, it's never bad-to-good. It's always just moving from different to different. Faster, more stuff, but there's always good, more good, and more bad.

C'est vrai. Voilá quelqu'un qui sent comme moi. (It is true. There is someone who feels as I do).

Do what is necessary to be resilient. You will get knocked down. What matters is that you get back up.

It's probably a form of childish curiosity that keeps me going as a fiction writer. I ... want to open everybody's bureau drawers and see what they keep in there. I'm nosy.