Quote

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

Mario Vargas Llosa

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mario Vargas Llosa
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: March 28
Dramaturge
Essayist
Film Director
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Playwright
Politician
Prosaist
Unhappiness
Unhappy
Fighting
Write
Writing
Way

More quotes by Mario Vargas Llosa

Image
I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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
Image
Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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
Image
It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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
Image
Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
Reading was such an enrichment of my life. And it was that pleasure that I had as a very young reader probably that is the origin of my vocation.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
North American society could not have reached its state of high development and modernity had it not been an open society.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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
Image
Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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