Quotes from Mario Vargas Llosa

Secretul fericirii, sau cel pu?in al lini?tii, e s? ?tii s? despar?i sexul de iubire. ?i, dac? e posibil, s? elimini iubirea romantic? din via?a ta, c?ci ea te face s? suferi.

I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharan, in Miraflores.

We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.

They had forgotten the abuses, the murders, the corruption, the spying, the isolation, the fear: horror had become myth. Everybody had jobs and there wasn't so much crime.

Scrivere un romanzo è una cerimonia che somiglia allo streap-tease. Come la ragazza che, sotto impudichi riflettori, si libera dei propri indumenti e mostra, a uno a uno, i suoi incanti segreti, così anche il romanziere mette a nudo la propria intimità in pubblico attraverso i suoi romanzi.

Pueden ustedes reírse de mí, cuando les dé la espalda.

Suspiró, abrumado por los niveles de imbecilidad que padecía el mundo.

Light literature, along with light cinema and light art, give the reader and the viewer the comfortable impression that they are cultured, revolutionary, modern and in the vanguard without having to make the slightest intellectual effort. Culture that purports to be avant-garde and iconoclastic instead offers conformity in its worst forms: smugness and self-satisfaction.

He was a man in the prime of his life, his fifties...broad forehead, aquiline nose, penetrating gaze, the very soul of rectitude and goodness.

Era un refugio huir allí: la vida espléndida de la ficción daba fuerzas para soportar la vida verdadera. Pero la riqueza de la literatura hacía también que la realidad real se empobreciera.

A writer is not always conscious of the influences he has received.

Podía soportar la soledad y las humillaciones que conocía desde niño y sólo herían su espíritu: lo horrible era el encierro, esa gran soledad exterior que no elegía, que alguien le arrojaba encima como una camisa de fuerza.

And yet, my dear Estela, in the end one accepts the will of God, resigns oneself, and discovers that, even with all its calvaries, life is full of beautiful things.

Qué suerte tenían aquellos para quienes la existencia del ser supremo no había sido nunca un problema, sino una certeza gracias a la cual el mundo se les ordenaba y todo encontraba su explicación y razón de ser.

Honor, vengeance, that rigorous religion, those punctilicious codes of conduct - how to explain their existence here, at the end of the world, among people who possessed nothing but the rags and the lice they had on them?

En lo que se refiere a Dios hay que creer, no razonar», decía Herbert. «Si razonas, Dios se esfuma como una bocanada de humo.»

Yo no quería creer que hubiera traicionado a su compañero de toda la vida. Bueno, la política es eso, abrirse camino entre cadáveres.

todo socialismo, al poner en marcha la planificación económica, al acabar con la competencia y la propiedad privada, establece automáticamente un mecanismo que a la corta o a la larga liquida el pluralismo político y las libertades, lo quieran o no los planificadores.

Trujillo podía hacer que el agua se volviera vino y los panes se multiplicaran, si le daba en los cojones

Living is worth the effort if only because without life we could not read or imagine stories.

Because of literature we can decipher, at least partially, the hieroglyphic that existence tends to be for the great majority of human beings.

Because in the civilization of the spectacle, intellectuals are of interest only if they play the fashion game and become clowns.

Because happiness was temporal, individual, in exceptional circumstances twofold, on extremely rare occasions tripartite, and never collective, civic.

Ni siquiera tenía ánimos para concentrarse en la lectura.