Film, as any immigrant will tell you, television and movies is the way we make sense of America when we first got here.

America is White and Black and Latino and Asian. America is mixed. America is immigrants.

Citizenship to me is more than a piece of paper. Citizenship is also about character. I am an American. We're just waiting for our country to recognize it.

For Filipino Americans, it's a battle for recognition, for identity in a culture where, for the mainstream, Asians tend to fade into a monochromatic racialized 'other.'

I am not the 'illegal' you think I am, and immigration is not what you think it is.

When people call me illegal, calling me illegal says more about you than it does about me.

To be in America illegally is actually a civil offense and not a criminal one.

You have to stand for something bigger than yourself.

I have no control over what people call me. The only thing I have control over is my work, and that's really all I can be judged on.

To me, it's just that social media is allowing people to be in charge of their own narratives.

I always felt like I had the word "illegal" tattooed on my forehead.

After the end of the world, there is a world. Life doesn’t stop. It changes. And it changes me.

You know how it is. Every time you kiss someone else, in a way you always remember that very first time.

Bankers play far too great a part in the conduct of industry.

I think comedians start off as pranksters or something.

The world is a sacred vessel. It should not be meddled with. It should not be owned. If you try to meddle with it you will ruin it. If you try to own it you will lose it

Animals are less alone with roaring than we are with all these words.

Spirituality, as expounded by the great saints and sages of the past, is a very broad path. It accommodates all types of belief systems. You need to satisfy everyone.

Scholars look for final truths they will never find. Creative writers concern themselves with possibilities that are always there to the receptive.

My idea of what's good and bad and right and wrong is maybe greyer than most, and I like writing about that.

Little fly, thy summer's play My thoughtless hand has brushed away. Am not I a fly like thee? Or art not thou a man like me? For I dance and drink and sing, Till some blind hand shall brush my wing!