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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
Utopia
Holocaust
Usually
Ends
Must
Utopias
Mistrust

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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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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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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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I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.
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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.
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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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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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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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Do the rhetorical quarrels of bourgeois political parties have anything to do with the interests of the humble and downtrodden?
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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.
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Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it
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It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
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North American society could not have reached its state of high development and modernity had it not been an open society.
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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.
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I think in a country like mine, violence is at the root of all human relations.
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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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It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.
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