Mario Vargas Llosa Quotes About Literature

Quotes about: Literature

• 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

• ‎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

• 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

• 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

• 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.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Jobs, Believe, Writing

• I completely believe that - literature for me is a way of life. That's probably true of all writers or all artists. I think in the end this kind of activity absorbs one in such a way that it becomes one's way of life.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Believe, Artist, Thinking

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

• I couldn't imagine any other way of living, outside of books, outside my work. Which doesn't mean I am not interested in other things, of course - I am interested in many things. But the center, the crux, is always literature.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Book, Mean, Literature

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

• 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.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Cutting, Rest Of Life, Feet

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

• I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Thinking, Literature, Has Beens

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

• We were trained as writers with the idea that literature is something that can change reality, that it's not just a very sophisticated entertainment, but a way to act.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Reality, Ideas, Way

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

• 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.

• I don't accept the idea that literature can be just entertainment and that there is no consequences of literature in the real world.

  Mario Vargas Llosa

  Real, Ideas, Literature

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

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin