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

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

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.

It's proper that people have friends, friendships without self-interest. Without friends, life is too lonely.

You must first of all think justly. Don’t sit in judgment over others when you don’t know the truth of the matter.

My words, my writing, my actions—these have never been for myself alone, either directly or indirectly. There is no such thing as an artist who creates art only for himself. That is masturbation.

Let us see whether it is the New Order or me who will be the loser before Indonesian history. I have won. The New Order has fallen and my writings have been translated into 40 languages.

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

The love I knew was from books.

Every book that is banned is a badge of honor.

I'll do as I please. My mind is not to be imprisoned.

I know what happened. I used my inTWINition

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Nobody ever tells me to give them a pass or anything. My job is to score goals, and if I don't shoot the puck, I can't score goals.

...like the 75 billion souls who lived before him, each and every one a treasure, he, too, will die.

I loved music from the age of eight. Jazz and blues. But also Little Richard and Elvis Presley.

Whether you believe you can or not, you're right.

I don't have to think. My only job is to show up and win.

I'm just damseling mostly. I'm not very good with a gun.

All I do is stay in the kitchen and cook. I don't go there to party.

I have grown up loving Shakespeare.