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

Mario Vargas Llosa

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Mario Vargas Llosa
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: March 28
Dramaturge
Essayist
Film Director
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Playwright
Politician
Prosaist
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More quotes by Mario Vargas Llosa

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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
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The worst thing that can happen to an artist is to be subsidized by the state. It leads to an intellectual and artistic castration.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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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
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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
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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
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I think in a country like mine, violence is at the root of all human relations.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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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.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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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
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A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be
Mario Vargas Llosa
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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
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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
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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
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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.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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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.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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Since it is impossible to know what's really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent, dream and take refuge in illusion. Because of these strange circumstances, Peruvian life, a life in which so few actually do read, has become literary.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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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.
Mario Vargas Llosa