Mario Vargas Llosa Quotes

Quotes about:

• Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Memories, Simple, Past

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2011). “The Storyteller: A Novel”, p.61, Macmillan

  92 Copy quote

• Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Reading, Protest, Insufficiency

  Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 07, 2010.

  81 Copy quote

• Nothing better protects a human being against the stupidity of prejudice, racism, religious or political sectarianism, and exclusivist nationalism than this truth that invariably appears in great literature: that men and women of all nations and places are essentially equal, and only injustice sows among them discrimination, fear, and exploitation.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Religious, Men, Racism

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• The secret to happiness, at least to peace of mind, is knowing how to separate sex from love. And, if possible, eliminating romantic love from your life, which is the love that makes you suffer. That way, I assure you, you live with greater tranquility and enjoy things more.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Sex, Romantic Love, Knowing

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2012). “The Bad Girl”, p.76, Faber & Faber

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• Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Want, Easy, What You Want

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2011). “The Time of the Hero: A Novel”, p.149, Macmillan

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• The secret to a masterpiece is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Inspiration, Secret, Masterpiece

  "Interview With Mario Vargas Llosa". Interview with Katharyn Rodemann, www.texasmonthly.com. November 2002.

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• There are people with a lot of prejudice, a lot of fear of the unknown. They think that immigration is a danger, when really it is a solution. This is an interesting issue, because it will be a central question of our time.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Thinking, Issues, People

  "Interview With Mario Vargas Llosa". Interview with Katharyn Rodemann, www.texasmonthly.com. November 2002.

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• ‎Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure...but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our human integrity and our human imperfection, with our actions, our dreams, and our ghosts, alone and in relationships that link us to others, in our public image and in the secret recesses of our consciousness.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Dream, Integrity, Reading

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• We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Holocaust, Utopia, Ends

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2013). “Making Waves: Essays 1962-93”, p.150, Faber & Faber

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• One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Fighting, Battle, Loser

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2012). “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter”, p.161, Faber & Faber

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• Violence represents the worst kind of conformism.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Violence, Kind, Worst

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• No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Perfect, Democracy, Regimes

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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)

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Art, Character, Life Is

  73 Copy quote

• You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Teaching, Writing, Creativity

  57 Copy quote

• Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Dark, Caverns, Stills

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• Men do not live by truth alone; they also need lies: those that they invent freely, not those that are imposed on them; those that appear as they are, not smuggled in beneath the clothes of history. Fiction enriches their existence, completes them and, fleetingly, compensates them for this tragic condition which is our lot: always to desire and dream more than we can actually achieve.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Dream, Lying, Men

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2011). “Making Waves: Essays”, p.198, Macmillan

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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.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Writing, Men, Alarms

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2011). “Making Waves: Essays”, p.52, Macmillan

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• Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Writing, Demon, Exorcist

  37 Copy quote

• In my case, literature is a kind of revenge. It's something that gives me what real life can't give me - all the adventures, all the suffering. All the experiences I can only live in the imagination, literature completes.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Revenge, Real, Adventure

  43 Copy quote

• I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Writing, Fighting, Unhappy

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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.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Country, Adventure, Boys

  "Peruvian Writer Mario Vargas Llosa on the Importance of Literature". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. May 31, 2012.

  23 Copy quote

• I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Loyalty, People, Feelings

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2012). “The Bad Girl”, p.240, Faber & Faber

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• This fact was something I also learned from this first novel that I needed personal experience to invent, to fantasize, to create fiction, but at the same time I needed some distance, some perspective on this experience in order to feel free enough to manipulate it and to transform it into fiction. If the experience is very close, I feel inhibited. I have never been able to write fiction about something that has happened to me recently. If the closeness of the real reality, of living reality, is to have a persuasive effect on my imagination, I need a distance, a distance in time and in space.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Real, Distance, Writing

  Mario Vargas Llosa (1991). “A Writer's Reality”, Mariner Books

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• When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Writing, Weapons, Literature

  "Peruvian Writer Mario Vargas Llosa on the Importance of Literature". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. May 31, 2012.

  31 Copy quote

• 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.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Brother, Book, Years

  Mario Vargas Llosa (2011). “In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture”, p.3, Macmillan

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