Mario Vargas Llosa Quotes
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Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.
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Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.
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It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
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Even though what I enjoy most is literature, I would not want to live only in a world of fiction, cut off from the rest of life. No - I want to always have a foot in the street, to be inmersed in the activities of my contemporaries, in the times, in the place where I live.
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One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.
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Eroticism has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me; it is a statement of the individual's sovereignty.
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Prosperity or egalitarianism -- you have to choose. I favor freedom -- you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.
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The truths that seem most truthful, if you look at them from all sides, if you look at them close up, turn out to be either half truths or lies.
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Literature is a form of permanent insurrection. Its mission is to arouse, to disturb, to alarm, to keep men in a constant state of dissatisfaction with themselves.
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But what do I have? The things I'm told and the things I tell, that's all. And as far as I know, that never yet made anyone fly.
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The secret to a masterpiece is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.
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Liberty is inseparable from social justice, and those who dissociate them, sacrificing the first with the purpose of attaining the second more quickly, are the true barbarians of our time.
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I have a chest full of all the insults, villainies, and infamies a man is capable of withstanding. . . . If you become famous, you will have to go through that.
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I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano's class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space.
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If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.
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Death isn't enough. It doesn't remove the stain. But a slap, a whiplash, square on the face, does. Because a man's face is as sacred as his mother or his wife.
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I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness.
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Journalism has been very important for me - for a long time I made my living as a journalist, and it also serves as a source of ideas. Many of the things I have written I would not have written without the experience of being a journalist.
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I always write a draft version of the novel in which I try to develop, not the story, not the plot, but the possibilities of the plot. I write without thinking much, trying to overcome all kinds of self-criticism, without stopping, without giving any consideration to the style or structure of the novel, only putting down on paper everything that can be used as raw material, very crude material for later development in the story.
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The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights. According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal.
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I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.
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Once upon a time, there was a boy who learned to read at the age of 5. This changed his life. Owing to the adventure tales he read, he discovered a way to escape from the poor house, the poor country, and the poor reality in which he lived.
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No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.
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There are many things behind a good novel, but in particular there is a lot of work - a lot of patience, a lot of stubbornness, and a critical spirit.
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There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.
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Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." (spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)
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Reading was such an enrichment of my life. And it was that pleasure that I had as a very young reader probably that is the origin of my vocation.
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Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.
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The writer’s job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that’s part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.
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A good novel is a conjunction of many factors, the main of which is without a doubt, hard work.
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