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

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.

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.

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

Imagination is a pleasant phenomenon.

Everyone is a criminal! We are beset on all sides by antirevolutionary forces. Naturally, then, humans fall into three categories: the criminal, the not-yet-criminal, and the not-yet-caught.

So not every person fits into the little rooms we build to hold them. There are infinite combinations of human and inhuman, male and female, brown and white.

Many things are linked to being able to live with uncertainty, ...with paradoxes. But this can be a strength of an organisation and a situation.

I don't know how many years I can still play. I have to listen to my body and see how it feels.

The process of quitting smoking doesn't end with the last cigarette. It's not quitting itself, the real key is staying quit

Poor whites didn't have rights. They made all kind of restrictions on voting. So person meant relatively well - off, free white man.

Locked up from mortal eye in shady leaves of destiny.

Forgiveness is commendable, but apply not ointment to the wound of an oppressor.

Fame is a heavy burden.