Kita tidak membenci orang Belanda. Kita hanya membenci pemerintah kolonial. Tetapi bila ada seseorang yang lapar atau menderita sakit, kita sendiri akan membagi makanan atau darah kita kepadanya untuk mengurangi penderitaannya. Politik adalah politik...
Bagi orang Barat, memiliki isteri yang kedua tidak beradab, tidak pantas dan kejam sekali, tetapi apapun kekurangan dalam kehidupan rumah tanggamu sehingga engkau tertarik untuk membangun rumah tangga yang lain, jangan sampai mengorbankan anak-anak.
Waktu itu aku tidak mengerti maknanya. Buju itu menceritakan bagaimana daun-daun kayu yang sudah cokelat dan kering harus jatuh untuk memberikan tempat kepada pucuk yang hijau dan baru. Tiga dasawarsa kemudian barulah aku mengerti.
Aku bagai seekor burung elang yang dipotong sayapnya. Setiap kali Inggit memandangiku, setiap kali pula darah menetes dari urat darahnya. Memang terasa lebih berat melihat orang yang kau cintai menghadapi penderitaan daripada bila kau mengalami sendi...
Ir. Soekarno, ijazah ini suatu saat dapat robek dan hancur menjadi abu. Dia tidak abadi, ingatlah, bahwa satu-satunya hal abadi adalah karakter dari seseorang. Kenangan terhadap karakter itu akan tetap hidup, sekalipun dia mati.
Sara knew that behind its locked front door no home was routine. Not the house of her childhood, not the apartment of her husband's. not the world they were building together with Willow and Patrick. All households had their mysteries, their particul...
...in the end it's not just the big and small events that make you who you are, make your life what it is, it's how you choose to react to them-that's where you have control over your life.
When you're alone and you feel sad, try reading a book. Try touching someone's heart. Try to imagine what they were thinking, what they wanted to convey. If you do that, you might get something amazing.
I gave three quiet cheers for Minnesota. In Seattle a dusty inch of anything white and chilly means the city lapses into full-on panic mode, as if each falling flake crashes to earth with its own individual baggie of used hypodermic needles. It’s r...
I could shove this swizzle stick through his heart, Min thought. She wouldn’t do it, of course. The stick was plastic and not nearly pointed enough on the end. Also people didn’t do things like that in Southern Ohio. A sawed-off shotgun, that was...
He had the prettiest hair she had ever seen on a man: dark brown, almost black, and soft like sable, it fell down to his shoulders. She wondered what he'd do if she threw some mud in it. Probably kill her.
The ancient Egyptians believed the god Anubis met each of us on the other side, and that he stood before a great scale on which our hearts were set. There each was weighed, tested, for its worth. Was this the heart I wanted measured?
It enclosed us in its laceries as we watched the moon spill across the Atlantic like wine from an overturned glass. With the light all around us, we felt secret in that moon-infused water like pearls forming in the soft tissues of oysters.
Memang berita mutasi tidak pernah menarik perhatianku; pengangkatan, pemecatan, perpindahan, pensiunan. Tak ada urusan! Kepriyayian bukan duniaku. Peduli apa iblis diangkat jadi mantri cacar atau diberhentikan tanpa hormat karena kecurangan? Duniaku ...
I'll never forget my first time with you' Min said as she edged the doughnut off her finger. 'The earth moved, and then my mother asked my father who he was going down on at lunch.
A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.
Sekarang, kepalaku membayangkan kuburan, tempat manusia yang terakhir. Tapi kadang-kadang manusia tak mendapat tempat dalam kandungan bumi. Ya, kadang-kadang. Pelaut, prajurit di zaman perang, sering mereka tak mendapat tempat tinggal terakhir. Dalam...
We're supposed to strive for harmony, and that's what the art of tea is supposed to accomplish... but harmony is very, very difficult to achieve in this country. Tea ceremony is powerless. But it's also not such a bad thing either. You should enjoy i...
Life is all about love. Everything — hate, lust, money, power, death, birth — it all stems from love. If life were put in a giant pot and boiled like a piece of chicken, all the fat would melt away, and what you’d be left with is love.
But that’s depression, isn’t it? It makes you selfish. It…it shrinks your world down. Like you’re inside a tornado or something. How are you supposed to care about the things outside that storm? When it’s all you can do to just survive it?
Rather than ask yourself if you are correct, it is far more realistic to think about how you are mistaken. Most humans have not been designed to be right very often.
