Our job as writers is to listen, to come home to the four corners of the earth.

Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.

Failure is what we're all running from, we're always running toward success with failure at our back.

I love to cook comfort food. I'll make fish and vegetables or meat and vegetables and potatoes or rice. The ritual of it is fun for me, and the creativity of it.

I tend to like to read history - recent history, because I find that much more intriguing than just a writer's imagination.

Some of my educated Filipino friends were aspiring poets, but their aspirations were all in the direction of the United States. They had no desire to learn from the bardic tradition that continued in the barrios. Their ideal would have been to write something that would get them to Iowa, where they would study creative writing.

The short story seems like the best of all possible worlds. I do feel it is closer to writing poetry than to writing a novel, with its requirements of concentration and economy.