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We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.

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
Usually
Ends
Must
Utopias
Mistrust
Utopia
Holocaust

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I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.
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Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.
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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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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.
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A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be
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Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.
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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.
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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.
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I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.
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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.
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It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.
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A good novel is a conjunction of many factors, the main of which is without a doubt, hard work.
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I think in a country like mine, violence is at the root of all human relations.
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When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it
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