It turns out that popularity is scary. I don’t feel comfortable receiving so much attention from people; perhaps that’s because I’m just a kampong boy. Andrea Hirata Read Quote
I’m a simple hillbilly. I don’t like eating modern, industrialized, fast food. I grew up eating home-cooked food. So when I’m traveling abroad, like when I recently received a six-month writing fellowship to Iowa in the U.S., I like to cook my own food. Andrea Hirata Read Quote
I’ve backpacked to countries like Italy and Turkey and observed beautiful scenery, but then I realized that beauty was always very close to me. It is here in Belitung Island, where the rivers, beaches and the terrain captivate my attention most. Andrea Hirata Read Quote
As a writer, I can’t really take days off. Writing is like creating an art. Once you stop writing, you can lose your rhythm and context, meaning that your writing may lose its power. Andrea Hirata Read Quote
I changed the course of my life, from the rigidity of mathematics and the corporate rhythm to a more bohemian world. Andrea Hirata Read Quote
Indonesian writers are so far behind in terms of global exposure compared with the Philippines and Japanese writers. Andrea Hirata Read Quote
One of the challenges is creating characters. I am trying to compose my sentences to express epic events happening to ordinary people. Andrea Hirata Read Quote
When I was a child, I saw in the news that a person from Belitung had done well in sports in Jakarta, and I just couldn’t imagine that it was possible for someone from here to become famous, and it’s still very isolated out here. Andrea Hirata Read Quote
I am a writer who has a policy to allocate 90 percent of my time for research and the remaining 10 percent to write. Andrea Hirata Read Quote
