Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language.

Such was the love of this grandson for his grandmother that two years after the death of his mother, when she herself fell gravely ill, he vowed to her that someday he would try to tell the world her life story. 'But why?' she asked humbly. 'I'm no one, just a girl from the coast' 'But you are everyone, Grandma,' the young Pramoedya told her. 'You are all the people who have ever had to fight to make this life their own.

An educated person must learn to act justly, beginning, first of all, with his thoughts, then later in his deeds. That is what it means to be educated.

Painting is literature in colors. Literature is painting in language.

Even though no one admits it, writers are leaders in their communities.

Humankind is able to create new conditions, a new reality. We are not fated to swim forever among the realities that are here now. ... Everything that is worthwhile in human civilization has not only originated from but has been inspired by dreams, by imagination.

Every award for me is important because it means a slap against militarism and fascism in Indonesia.