“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.”

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

“If people don't recognize such limits, God will make them realize His own way”

“How simple life is. It's as simple as this: you're hungry and you eat, you're full and you shit. Between eating and shitting, that's where human life is found. - (Houseboy + Maid, in Tales from Djakarta)”

“All we can do is pray, Ma, pray.No, Child, these are the deeds of human beings. Planned by the brains of humans, and by the warped hearts of humans. It is to people we must speak our words. God has never sided with the defeated.”

“I will not close my eyes, neither those in my head nor those in my soul, as the ship carries me away, along with my future, my dreams, and my beliefs. Buru Island is no happy land somewhere; it's but a way station on my journey in life—though to believe even that much will require no small measure of hope.”

“At the beginning of all growth, everything imitates.”