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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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Mario Vargas Llosa
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: March 28
Dramaturge
Essayist
Film Director
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Playwright
Politician
Prosaist
Ends
Writers
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Believe
Completely
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More quotes by 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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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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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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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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I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.
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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If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.
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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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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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
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It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
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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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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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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North American society could not have reached its state of high development and modernity had it not been an open society.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.
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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Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.
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