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?

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.

Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get.

Being remembered is all anyone can ask from a lost love.

Love and honesty don't mix.

History is changed by martyrs who tell the truth.