Pramoedya Ananta Toer Quotes

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

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

At the beginning of all growth, everything imitates.

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.

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

It is proper for people to have friends, friendships without self-interest. Without friends, life is too lonely.

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

Do not underestimate the human being, who sometimes appears so simple. Even with sight as sharp as an eagle, a mind as sharp as a razor, senses more powerful than gods, hearing that can catch the music and the lamentations of life, your knowledge of humanity will never be total.

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.