"Growing up in the Philippines, I loved all kinds of movies. We had a very healthy film industry there when I was a child."

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

"I have been definitely influenced more by Latin American writers than by any other type of writer. They are very close in terms of voice - their humor, their fatalism, their... well, that over-used term 'magical realism.' It's a wonderful term that's just been used so much, we don't know what it means anymore."

"There were also horror shows on the radio. Very terrifying and thrilling to me as a kid. They had all these creepy sound effects. They would come on at ten o'clock at night, and I just would scare myself to death."

"There's a certain urgency that comes from the records of the early 60s before overdubbing and multitracking came into play."

"First rule of politics: you can't win unless you're on the ballot. Second rule: If you run, you may lose. And, if you tie, you do not win."

"I'm interested in current affairs and social policy as a whole, but I don't watch politics for sport."

"The point is, once they have a missile that can hit the United States, we are now back in the kind of game we used to worry about with the Soviet Union, only the Soviet Union was more mature about this whole thing than I think the North Koreans will be."