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

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

Literature is an ethical leap. It is a moral decision. A perilous exercise in constant failure. Literature should have grievances, because there are so many grievances in the world.

I have to believe that literature can effect change; otherwise, I would have no purpose in my life and would have wasted four years on Ilustrado.

Sometimes one waits too long for the perfect moment before snapping the picture. You never realize that you needed was to change perspective.

Fiction is a very powerful tool for teaching history. The Philippines was the first Iraq, the first Vietnam, the first Afghanistan, in the sense that it was the United States initial or baptismal experience in nation-building.

History is changed by martyrs who tell the truth.