Quotes from Mario Vargas Llosa

One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.

Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.

Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it

I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.

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.

Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." (spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)

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.

Sentía una inmensa ternura por ella. Estaba seguro de que la querría siempre, para mi dicha y también mi desdicha.

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.

Well, at heart I knew she'd never be a normal woman. And I didn't want her to be one, because what I loved in her were the indomitable and unpredictable aspects of her personality

La literatura quizá hace a los seres humanos más aptos para la infelicidad, porque despierta unos apetitos y deseos que no pueden cumplirse, pero enriquece la sensibilidad de las personas y las da una comprensión mayor del mundo. Los hace…sentir mucho más aptos para la libertad.

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

The writer's job is to write with rigor, with commitment, to defend what they believe with all the talent they have. I think that's part of the moral obligation of a writer, which cannot be only purely artistic. I think a writer has some kind of responsibility at least to participate in the civic debate. I think literature is impoverished, if it becomes cut from the main agenda of people, of society, of life.

That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it.

No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.

Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern.

Es más fácil imaginar la muerte de una persona que la de cien o mil...Multiplicado, el sufrimiento se vuelve abstracto. No es fácil conmoverse por cosas abstractas.

Las mentiras machacadas día y noche se vuelven verdades.

No me preguntes por qué, porque ni muerta te lo voy a decir. Nunca te voy a decir que te quiero aunque te quiera.

Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his.

Cuando creí que iba a perder la razón ante tanto sufrimiento. Así descubrí que un ser humano no puede vivir sin creer.

I always write a draft version of the novel in which I try to develop, not the story, not the plot, but the possibilities of the plot. I write without thinking much, trying to overcome all kinds of self-criticism, without stopping, without giving any consideration to the style or structure of the novel, only putting down on paper everything that can be used as raw material, very crude material for later development in the story.

Hay días en que la recuerdo y me pregunto: ¿Qué estará haciendo? Hay noches en que la extraño y me pregunto: ¿Qué me estoy haciendo?

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.