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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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Mario Vargas Llosa
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: March 28
Dramaturge
Essayist
Film Director
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Philosopher
Playwright
Politician
Prosaist
Things
Living
Interested
Doesn
Couldn
Book
Outside
Many
Imagine
Mean
Courses
Work
Course
Way
Books
Crux
Always
Literature
Center

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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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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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.
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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.
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Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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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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Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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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.
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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I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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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.
Mario Vargas Llosa
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I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.
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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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
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I think in a country like mine, violence is at the root of all human relations.
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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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
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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.
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