People From Manila

"But at the end of the day, it’s really swertehan (luck) …. destiny, yes!"

"Always be thankful that you have luck by your side and people will love you more if you are doing your job right. It's good that you listen and learn,"

"I want to create my own character based on what role they give me."

"The natural. So I want to see a more natural person."

"But if you must help, just give a little as a present and don’t expect it to be returned."

"Don’t lend money you can’t afford to lose."

"Like I always say, winning or losing is not the beginning or the end. It’s only a step towards your own future, whatever it’s that you do."

"I think people should do what suits them and make them feel comfortable."

"Health, wealth, and time to spend it."

"I always wanted them to speak in their language, whatever they’re comfortable with…"

"In a way, I’m able to explain why I said this, I said that."

"I love the business as it is kasi it has made it very comfortable for me. Everything I have ( because of showbiz). A lot of what I have comes from the business."

"By being busy, working, having many friends."

"I think that’s the new age. That’s just how they are now."

"Now, they let kids make mistakes. Like my daughter (Isabelle). She let her children fall. And when they cried, that was fine. Unlike me before, when they fell, I got upset. It was very different."

"Before, it was different. Your mother wasn’t your friend. She always said no. She would tell you something couldn’t be done. She was your protector, your everything. Your mother wasn’t your friend. She always said no. She would tell you something couldn’t be done. She was your protector, your everything."

"Adjust your appetite. Look at the price from right to left. Adjust your appetite to the price."

"That’s the number one thing I always told my daughters.“Who cares?""

"Keep money not the main conversation. But more than anything, make sure they (children) always share, that they’re always part of a group, and that they don’t feel the need to keep up with anyone."

"Oh, just the same things I do. I think if he has been in the moon for so long I think when he comes over he wants to change, I guess."

"I used to say that when you enter a contest, you must keep it in your mind that this is not the beginning or the end. This is just a stepping stone, something different. If you win, good. If you lose, okay. You make friends, you enjoy. But it’s more difficult for me to say that now because now, they are already 26 or 27, it’s a life-changing career."

"One of my fondest childhood recollections is spinning 7” vinyl records on my plastic turntable, an RCA 45-EY. Becoming a composer-musician and recording artist was a natural recourse and fruition."

"Fear history, for it respects no secrets."

"As one who wrote interesting stories — whimsical stories, perhaps — and who drew whimsical maps and landscapes across a long canvas. Is this real enough? I also wish to be remembered as a Filipino, most of all."

"I was just a kid inventing my own guitar chords because I did not have a teacher. Whatever sounded good to me was effectively correct. There were no rules."

"I was stuck somewhere between originality and no gigs. My own colleagues called me the conceptualist, the maverick with the only too occasional stadium concert."

"Honor the teachers that open the mind."

"Francis does not teach anything new; what he says is already written in the Gospel: Jesus' love for the poor, the call to conversion, and everything else. He told me that he greatly admires Paul VI, especially Evangelii nuntiandi, which for me is perhaps the most important document of the post-conciliar period. However, Francis emphasised joy, gaudium, because there is a tendency in today's world, not only in the Church, to feel tired and sad. Family life, study, work: these are experienced as a burden. But we have the real reason to be joyful: Jesus, who died and rose again, is alive and is our hope."

"I was not totally surprised that the Holy Father would release an encyclical on Jesus’ love for us, symbolized in His Sacred Heart. For me, it was the Holy Father’s way of making the Christological foundation of the social encyclicals Laudato si and Fratelli tutti” more explicit."

"Father Kroeger mentioned you both loved music. Could you tell us a little story about what happened during those years you were studying together? Cardinal Tagle: Father Jim – or “Jim” at that time — was the choir director of the seminary choir. Especially during big events in the seminary, the philosophy seminarians and the theology seminarians would come together to form one big choir. Jim would teach us and conduct the choir. He was a joy to watch because we didn’t know whether he was conducting or dancing. He made music practice quite enjoyable. Of course we did not tell him that at the time. It was fun because some choir directors that followed Jim were quite stern. He made it fun."

"God who comes to us. We will never be alone. Emmanuel: God with us. And other things that are with us will disappear: the investments, the achievements, the gifts, our money… will all disappear. All these things that we have associated with Christmas may disappear. But Jesus who comes as one of us, God with us, will remain with us forever. So that is our hope."

"The Bible, the practice of the Church from its birth, the Social Teachings of the Church, the witness of martyrs and saints, and the constant mission of the Church towards the poor and neglected through the centuries form a chorus and a symphony which we are invited to hear and to join with our voices and the "instruments" that we have, namely our persons, time, talents, treasure."

"Me, the future Pope? That's a joke by journalists."

"It is a realization that what happens is the young become more connected to God given social media. What happens is they are touched by whatever happens and they want to promote it to others."

"It’s my love for cinema that fuels my work. If there is one thing then, that, as a scholar, as a film buff, I have always loved to do, it is to go and look for the origins and inspirations of films, and of course I am not referring only to horror. Understanding the influences that determined certain choices. Also, to understand myself, to understand how I work and how I assemble ideas and solutions. It is said that the language of cinema is cinema, and it is very true. Everything comes from something else: it is a collection of ever-changing pieces of a mosaic. I have never studied cinema academically or from a theoretical point of view and, consequently, I have always advanced on the basis of my intuitions and instincts, which might be naïve, but also genuine"

"I always had dreamed of writing a novel set in the Philippines—what I knew of it. I struggled for years while I was writing poetry, thinking, one day I’m going to write this book. But in what voice? I read Malaysian writers and Chinese writers and Indian writers until I stumbled upon the Latin American writers and I realized that that was it: the humor, the fatalism, the passion and irony (1991)"

"Defiant, naive, and passionate, we are sprouting up all over the Bay Area-artists of color who write, perform, and collaborate with each other, borders be damned. We are muralistas, filmmakers, musicians, dancers, painters, printmakers, small press publishers, playwrights, poets, and more poets. . . . San Francisco seems to be more a city of poets and musicians than anything else. Rock 'n' roll, R&B, the funk mystique of Oakland, the abstract seduction of jazz, and the glorious rants and chants of loup garous, gypsies, sympathetic cowboys, and water buffalo shamans: Al Robles, Ishmael Reed, Norman Jayo, Ntozake Shange, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Janice Mirikitani, Thulani Davis, David Henderson, Alejandro Murguia, Ed Dom, Alta, Serafin and Lou Syquia, Kitty Tsui, and on and on.... They are my teachers and peers, kindred spirits, borders be damned. A movement is afoot to assert ourselves as artists and thinkers, to celebrate our individual histories, our rich and complicated ethnicities."

"It will never end, I hope-whatever "it" is. The gift, the quest, the visions, the dreams in secret languages. The songs and the storytelling. It will never end; it is still writing itself."

"We all need money to live and continue to make our art. And sometimes these prizes and awards can be a sort of validation. But money and prizes don’t mean that the work you produce is going to be any good. Sometimes those accolades actually get in the way. The lean times are often when the good stuff happens. So, let’s not get fixated on fame and money. Write like you’re on fire, be fearless, dream and explore. (2022)"

"(Is it important for Filipinx/Filpinx American storytellers to focus on Philippine culture and history in their work?) No. You should feel free to write whatever you want to write. We don’t make art to represent. That has to happen organically. Filipinos are not a monolith. Humans aren’t a monolith. We all have different experiences and need to write across the different identities we hold. As artists, we should be free to write about a wide range of complicated characters and subjects. Don’t limit yourself to only what you know. But definitely do your homework! Being a writer is hard work. (2022)"

"When I was a young activist writer in the Bay Area, I thought I had all the answers. Sometimes I was right, and a lot of times I was just plain ignorant and wrong. There were a few positive things that came from my impatience, energy and anger: I dared to do things with my artistic comrades that hadn’t been done before. We came together in writing collectives to make books because most writers of color were not being published at the time. We didn’t know how to publish, but we learned how to do it guerrilla-style. We organized readings, performances and concerts, made posters and came out to support each other big-time. We brought the noise. And got it done. It all boils down to that old cliche: believe in yourself. Trust in your creative vision and the power of your distinct writer’s voice. (2022)"

"My leaving was not of my doing; that was because of my parents’ breakup. But I was fortunate to be living in San Francisco. There was so much activity, so many activists, so many Filipinos fleeing, coming over. It was the perfect time for me to grow as an artist. I mean, we came in the ’60s—can you imagine? We hit the Summer of Love. There were all these political movements that opened my eyes. I met all these amazing young Filipino American poets who became my teachers. They were going to demonstrations, and I got involved. I was reading up on it, making connections. My God, my brain was vibrating! There was a coup d’état in Chile. There was war in El Salvador. People were making alliances, making connections, and I came to understand: It wasn’t just about us. It was about all these colonies—former colonies—that had the same people running shit, who were probably engineering all these coups. It was a harsh awakening for me and a lot of people like me. (2020)"

"Having access to all these languages and dialects enriched my already wild imagination and made me curious—about who I was, about the world, about the Philippines I knew and the many different ways I could tell a story. (2019)"

"Philippine literature—just like the Philippines itself—is complicated, and can’t be easily described or pinned down. Over 7000 islands make up the Philippines, and over a hundred languages and dialects are spoken!...(What common elements and themes do you see in Philippine writing? And what do you see in the pieces here?) JH: Yearning, and melancholy. Mordant humor, a certain kind of fatalism, love of the macabre and supernatural. A love of puns and a sense of irony. A reckoning with history and the colonial past. (2019)"

"What I try to share with younger artists, not just writers, is you have to not be afraid. You have to try it. It’s our job. And do your homework while you’re at it. But don’t squash your imagination. I mean, my imagination is all I have. I mean, it’s unique to me, unique to you, unique to my students. They have their own, and they have to learn to trust it. (2019)"

"…Research is always involved, to make sure details, language and atmosphere feel right. Then comes the hard work of a writer, which is the writing itself. One sentence leads to another and then another… You try to maintain focus and discipline, writing for as long as you can, everyday until you’re done with a draft. Then you go back and start revising and the mysterious creative process begins all over again. Each time you begin, you hopefully go deeper into your story and your characters and end up surprising yourself."

"By saying that all my characters have a little bit of me in them, I mean that I try to be invested and empathetic in all my characters—whether they are principal or secondary, deeply flawed and not very “nice.” If you’re in tune with your story then the characters do come at you organically. There isn’t an order to how they might appear."

"Filipino writers who write in English should be at an advantage in terms of connecting with international readers, but the irony is that their work isn't really known to the rest of the world. As for me, writing in Tagalog has never been a real option. It's too complex. Just because I can speak the language (somewhat) doesn't mean that I can write in Tagalog with any eloquence or authority."

"The work involved in writing a novel is completely solitary, unlike playwriting. And the struggle is often painful. There is no one to turn to but yourself. You confront your own demons in order to dig deep and come up with something risky and powerful. Playwriting is the exact opposite process for me because it's so collaborative. If you're blessed with a terrific cast, a visionary director, an innovative sound and design team, then your play has a ninety-nine percent chance of being realized in the best possible way. I think people forget -- even some of my most aware graduate students! -- that writing is hard work. Period."

"you can never see any of your characters as monsters; I think then you'd write a really terrible book. Everyone is a complicated and flawed human being (Callaloo, Fall 2008)"