Quote

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

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
Book
Outside
Many
Imagine
Mean
Courses
Work
Course
Way
Books
Crux
Always
Literature
Center
Things
Living
Interested
Doesn
Couldn

More quotes by Mario Vargas Llosa

Image
A good novel is a conjunction of many factors, the main of which is without a doubt, hard work.
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
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
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
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
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
Image
We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.
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
It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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
Image
Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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.
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 isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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
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
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
One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.
Mario Vargas Llosa
Image
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.
Mario Vargas Llosa