Growing up as an amateur, I wasn't much of a power puncher. I was more of a speed guy.

I liked Roy Jones, Sugar Ray Leonard, Ali... those were the guys I was looking at growing up.

Even the other kids who people made fun of made fun of me. That's where I stood on the school food chain.

All I know is that I'm proud to be Filipino.

I grew up hearing about Raj Kapoor and K. Asif and the way they used to make films lavishly. We are dream merchants and we have got to sell dreams, which are lapped up by all.

Having a crying baby is inspiration to get the job done quickly.

At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.

The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.