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.

Life can give everything to whoever tries to understand and is willing to receive new knowledge.

I don't write to give joy to readers but to give them a conscience.

I happen to be pretty productive when I am in jail. When you are in jail, you have to spend more time with yourself.

A mother knows what her child's gone through, even if she didn't see it herself.

Every good teaching may still end up producing evil bandits who have no principles whatsoever, an outcome even more likely when the teacher is also a bandit.

The fracture of pencil still useful, but the fracture of soul, we couldn't use it, Mister.