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'Illustrado' is not an autobiography. Only the ideas are autobiographical; the ideas of bitterness, frustration, unchanging society, an individual lost, social awkwardness... The book satirises archetypes from across Filipino society, and I felt that the least I could do was offer myself up, too.

The ethnic differences among Filipinos are very real. The paucity of arable land, for instance, explains the industry of the Ilokanos and the Cebuanos.

I do not like the way oppressed Filipinos are being treated now. They are oppressed and have no one to turn to.

Filipinos are not worse than any other colonized people except that our colonization was a little longer, and the independence movement was always dictated in political terms, never in social ones. We borrowed terms, but we didn't understand them.

I articulate the deepest need of the Filipino people, which is reform of a corrupt culture.

I don't see myself as any different from all the other Filipinos who have gone abroad looking for opportunity, to be a nurse, a labourer, a maid or a prostitute.

I was born in America, but I consider myself a Filipino.

I haven't written about an immigrant experience because I haven't experienced that before and am focused on existential themes.

I was raised in a dominantly Filipino family. I didn't know I was 'mixed' until I got older and started asking questions about my grandparents, the origins of our middle and last names. We were kind of textbook Pinoys. A lot of the Filipino stereotypes that were joked about by me and my friends rang very true with my family.

There was never a time that I thought of renouncing my Filipino citizenship. I never abandoned my country. I've been here through thick and thin. Jojo Binay is a Filipino.