Quotes from Farish A. Noor

Odd, some might think. Why someone would need to travel so far to find oneself. Surely a look in the mirror would suffice, and wouldn't that be cheaper too? But the mirror lies, and the eyes that do the looking conspire too.

And wherever I go, and no matter how hard I try, I will never be free of this hateful thing I call my 'Self'. One can never take a holiday from oneself. That is the tragedy of individuals and nations.

Write, and write well. But most of all write truthfully, that's enough, for the truth always hurts the wicked and evil.

Watching the developments from afar was both an exercise of academic speculation and resignation to the finitude of one's capabilities; an opportunity to tend to one's neuroses in the privacy of one's secret garden; an acquiescence to impotence and an acknowledgement of the limits of the pen.

As we walk on the stage of human agency otherwise known as history, we should remember that ours are but bit-parts, to be played only momentarily before we move on. The characters may change but the paradigm remains, every generation being the inheritor of the role of Hamlet, yearning and looking for lost fathers, weary of becoming broken men themselves.