Mario Vargas Llosa Inspirational Quotes (36)

Do the rhetorical quarrels of bourgeois political parties have anything to do with the interests of the humble and downtrodden?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be

Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.

The worst thing that can happen to an artist is to be subsidized by the state. It leads to an intellectual and artistic castration.

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

We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.

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.