"In order to fit into certain ideals, you need to mutilate yourself."

“…My fiction is also influenced by women intellectuals such as Melani Budianta and Julia Suryakusuma. I love the works of male writers such as Asrul Sani, Budi Darma’s Orang-orang Bloomington , and Moetinggo Boesje’s play Malam Jahanam , but my priority now is to learn more about writings by women. Just like in many Western countries, the practice of defining literature has often excluded or ignored women’s writings and their contexts.”

“…I thought it was important to resist. That’s why I wanted to tell stories about bad women. Feminism, though, was much less appealing than in today's conservative Indonesia. Even progressive male thinkers tend to see feminism in Indonesia as irrelevant, disruptive, or merely a copycat of Western feminism.”

“We are always haunted by the question of not choosing the other path, the road not taken…Travelling is always about making choices, but at the same time your choices are made for you, structured by many things: nationality, class, gender, what we can access and what not. We’re walking on a map that already exists and our location on the map has been decided.”

“We can decide where to go but we’re not really free…I like having this idea of multiple selves and multiple circumstances. Because that’s what we are.”