Quotes from Mario Vargas Llosa

Latin America seemed to be a land where there were only dictators, revolutionaries, catastrophes. Now we know that Latin America can produce also artists, musicians, painters, thinkers, and novelists.

The novels that have fascinated me most are the ones that have reached me less through the channels of the intellect or reason than bewitched me.

Reality is the richest thing there is, the most important thing there is. Our imagination allows us to live an artificial life that is wonderful, extremely rich, but I don't believe any artist would dare to say that artifice is better than real life.

Death isn't enough. It doesn't remove the stain. But a slap, a whiplash, square on the face, does. Because a man's face is as sacred as his mother or his wife.

It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.

La verdad, había en ella algo que era imposible no admirar, por esas razones que nos llevan a apreciar las obras bien hechas, aunque sean perversas.

A person who does not read, or reads little, or reads only trash, is a person with an impediment: he can speak much but he will say little, because his vocabulary is deficient in the means for self-expression. This is not only a verbal limitation. It represents also a limitation in intellect and imagination. It is a poverty of thought, for the simple reason that ideas, the concepts through which we grasp the secrets of our condition, do not exist apart from words.

Leer es protestar contra las insuficiencias de la vida

Aunque dicen que sólo los imbéciles son felices, confieso que me sentía feliz.

writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!

It's easier to imagine the death of one person than those of a hundred or a thousand. When multiplied, suffering becomes abstract. It's not easy to be moved by abstract things.

escribir lo que no se había vivido, lo que sólo se había querido vivir, era también una manera —cobarde y tímida— de vivirlo...

O comes o te comen, no hay más remedio.

Para todo el mundo es más difícil vivir en la verdad que en la mentira.

El secreto de la felicidad, o, por lo menos, de la tranquilidad, es saber separar el sexo del amor. Y, si es posible, eliminar el amor romántico de tu vida, que es el que hace sufrir. Así se vive más tranquilo y se goza más, te aseguro.

Whether religious or racial, anti-Semitism is always repugnant, one of the most destructive manifestations of human stupidity and evil. What is profoundly expressed in it is man's traditional mistrust of the man who is not part of his tribe, that 'other' who speaks a different language, whose skin is a different color, and who participates in mysterious rites and rituals.

Un libro abierto es un cerebro que habla; cerrado, un amigo que espera; olvidado, un alma que perdona; destruido, un corazón que llora».

Lo injusta que es a veces la suerte con los artistas que sueñan con encontrar el Paraíso en este terrenal valle de lágrimas.

I am somewhat allergic to explanations that divide men and women into frozen categories and attribute to each sex its characteristic virtues and shortcomings.

Los zorros del desierto de Sechura aúllan como demonios cuando llega la noche; ¿sabes por qué?: para quebrar el silencio que los aterroriza.

Tú eres bonita sobre todo cuando sonríes.

Nostalgia is cowardice

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...

L'ispirazione non esiste. È forse qualcosa che guida le mani di scultori e pittori e detta immagini e note all'udito di poeti e musicisti, ma che non va mai a trovare il romanziere: quest'ultimo è del tutto trascurato dalle muse ed è condannato a sostituire quella collaborazione negatagli con la testardaggine, la fatica e la pazienza