Onny Wiranda > Onny's Quotes

“Definisi negara federal yang paling tepat adalah Bhinneka Tunggal Ika. Justru demi ke-Tunggal-an RI itulah ke-Bhinneka-an federal dalam abad ke-21 harus dibentuk.”
― Y.B. Mangunwijaya, Menuju Republik Indonesia Serikat

“Indonesia ini memang negeri yang unik, penuh dengan hal-hal yang seram serius, tetapi penuh dagelan dan badutan juga. Mengerikan tapi lucu, dilarang justru dicari dan amat laku, dianjurkan, disuruh tetapi malah diboikot, kalah tetapi justru menjadi amat populer dan menjadi pahlawan khalayak ramai, berjaya tetapi keok celaka, fanatik anti PKI tetapi berbuat persis PKI, terpeleset tetapi dicemburui, aman tertib tetapi kacau balau, ngawur tetapi justru disenangi, sungguh misterius tetapi gamblang bagi semua orang. Membuat orang yang sudah banyak makan garam seperti saya ini geleng-geleng kepala tetapi sekaligus kalbu hati cekikikan. Entahlah, saya tidak tahu. Gelap memprihatinkan tetapi mengandung harapan fajar menyingsing......(menyanyi) itulah Indonesia. Menulis kolooom selesai.
["Fenomena PRD dll,"].”
― Y.B. Mangunwijaya, Politik hati nurani

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.”
― Garrison Keillor

“Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name.

Remembered line from a long-
forgotten poem”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels

“I could read the great books but the great books don't interest me.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems

“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“We improve ourselves by victory over our self. There must be contests, and you must win.”
― Edward Gibbon

“Uang tidak kucari dan emas membuatku menggeleng kepala. Hidup damai yang tahu bahasa bintang adalah pamrihku”
― Y.B. Mangunwijaya, Ikan-ikan Hiu, Ido, Homa

“You love me. Real or not real?"
I tell him, "Real.”
― Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman

“Reading is never a waste of time.”
― Roberto Bolaño, 2666

“Cities have often been compared to language: you can read a city, it’s said, as you read a book. But the metaphor can be inverted. The journeys we make during the reading of a book trace out, in some way, the private spaces we inhabit. There are texts that will always be our dead-end streets; fragments that will be bridges; words that will be like the scaffolding that protects fragile constructions. T.S. Eliot: a plant growing in the debris of a ruined building; Salvador Novo: a tree-lined street transformed into an expressway; Tomas Segovia: a boulevard, a breath of air; Roberto Bolano: a rooftop terrace; Isabel Allende: a (magically real) shopping mall; Gilles Deleuze: a summit; and Jacques Derrida: a pothole. Robert Walser: a chink in the wall, for looking through to the other side; Charles Baudelaire: a waiting room; Hannah Arendt: a tower, an Archimedean point; Martin Heidegger: a cul-de-sac; Walter Benjamin: a one-way street walked down against the flow.”
― Valeria Luiselli

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Life itself is a quotation.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“If I could live again my life,
In the next - I'll try,
- to make more mistakes,
I won't try to be so perfect,
I'll be more relaxed...
I'll take fewer things seriously..
I'll take more risks,
I'll take more trips,
I'll watch more sunsets,
I'll climb more mountains,
I'll swim more rivers,
I'll go to more places I've never been
I'll eat more ice ...I'll have more real problems and less imaginary ones

If I could live again - I will travel light
If I could live again - I'll try to work bare feet at the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,
I'll watch more sunrises ...If I have the life to live”
― Anonymous

“There are those who seek the love of a woman to forget her, to not think about her.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph and Other Stories

“The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.”
― George Orwell, Books v. Cigarettes

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace.”
― Milan Kundera

“How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?”
― Dr. Seuss

“It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Amor"

So many days, oh so many days
seeing you so tangible and so close,
how do I pay, with what do I pay?

The bloodthirsty spring
has awakened in the woods.
The foxes start from their earths,
the serpents drink the dew,
and I go with you in the leaves
between the pines and the silence,
asking myself how and when
I will have to pay for my luck.

Of everything I have seen,
it's you I want to go on seeing:
of everything I've touched,
it's your flesh I want to go on touching.
I love your orange laughter.
I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.

What am I to do, love, loved one?
I don't know how others love
or how people loved in the past.
I live, watching you, loving you.
Being in love is my nature.

You please me more each afternoon.

Where is she? I keep on asking
if your eyes disappear.
How long she's taking! I think, and I'm hurt.
I feel poor, foolish and sad,
and you arrive and you are lightning
glancing off the peach trees.

That's why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
for love has to be so,
involving and general,
particular and terrifying,
joyful and grieving,
flowering like the stars,
and measureless as a kiss.

That's why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
for love has to be so,
involving and general,
particular and terrifying,
joyful and grieving,
flowering like the stars,
and measureless as a kiss.”
― Pablo Neruda, Intimacies: Poems of Love

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, look to tomorrow, rest this afternoon.”
― Charles M. Schulz, Charlie Brown's Little Book of Wisdom