Andrea Hirata Quotes & Sayings

#1. Happiness is actually found in simple things, such as taking my nephew around the island by bicycle or seeing the stars at night. We go to coffee shops or see airplanes land at the airport.

Andrea Hirata

#2. I am a working person. I always work, study or do research for my novel. I even work on Sunday.

Andrea Hirata

#3. 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

#4. I'm a small-town boy who comes from a traditional family on a tiny island called Belitung. I may not know where I'm going, but I'll always know where to come home to.

Andrea Hirata

#5. Writing is taking a risk, and it is actually fighting invisible and invincible enemies. They are over-confidence, stupidity, expectation and narcissism.

Andrea Hirata

#6. The treasure of a writer is to maintain their own style.

Andrea Hirata

#7. I want to write books that can truly become a legacy and bring benefits to people.

Andrea Hirata

#8. My story is the story of forgotten people and the voice of the voiceless.

Andrea Hirata

#9. I am the only one who is not married among my siblings.

Andrea Hirata

#10. 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

#11. Preparation Perfect Performances

Andrea Hirata

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. From a building right in front of my windows, I can observe the speed of the sunrises and sunsets. The voices of children playing, laughing, yelling, and crying on the playground crawl up to the eighth floor, where I write. Their voices sound so innocent from a distance.

Andrea Hirata

#16. I think what matters most in literary work is the context, not the text.

Andrea Hirata

#17. 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