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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

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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
Writing
Writer
Kind
Teach
Good
Within
Would
Help
Like
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Cannot
Discover
Become
Creativity
Young
Teaching

More quotes by 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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If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.
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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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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.
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I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.
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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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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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
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A good novel is a conjunction of many factors, the main of which is without a doubt, hard work.
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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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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Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.
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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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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We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.
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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When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.
Mario Vargas Llosa