Quotes from Mario Vargas Llosa

as everybody in the Andes knows, when the devil comes to work his evil on earth he sometimes takes the shape of a limping gringo stranger. And

Con dogmáticos o con inteligentes, el Perú estará siempre jodido —dijo Carlitos—. Este país empezó mal y acabará mal. Como nosotros, Zavalita.

Writing is a compensatory activity, and literature abounds in cases like his. Borges's pages teem with knives, crimes, and scenes of torture, but the cruelty is kept at a distance by his fine sense of irony and by the cool rationalism of his prose, which never falls into sensationalism or the purely emotional. This lends a statuesque quality to the physical horror, giving it the nature of a work of art set in an unreal world.

The symbol of a setting for a Hemingway story is a boxing ring; for Borges, a library. On the other hand I think Nabokov was a writer quite close to Borges. He had the same rich literary culture, moved with great ease in different languages and traditions, and had a playful approach to literature-literature as an intellectual game, through which, of course, the real truths could appear. But apparently the game was for Nabokov just an exercise devoid of moral substance.

The houses are ugly, imitations of imitations.

Borges's ethnocentric limitation does not detract from his many other admirable qualities, but it is best not to sidestep it when giving a comprehensive appraisal of his work. Certainly, it is a limitation that offers further proof of his humanity because, as has been said over and over again, there is no such thing as absolute perfection in this world, not even in the world of a creative artist like Borges, who comes as close as anyone to achieving it.

Había dejado de ser un peruano en muchos sentidos, sin duda. ¿Qué era, entonces? Tampoco había llegado a ser un europeo, ni en Francia, ni mucho menos en Inglaterra. ¿Qué eras, pues, Ricardito?

It was a question I asked myself each time one of these studies or field observations came to my attention, and I saw, once again, that no mention was made, even in passing, of those wandering tellers of tales, who seemed to me to be the most exquisite and precious exemplars of that people, numbering a mere handful, and who, in any event, had forged that curious emotional link between the Machiguengas and my own vocation (not to say, quite simply, my own life).

Es verdad que es imposible conocer a fondo a las personas, todas son insondables.

Pareciera que en el fondo de todos nosotros hubiese un monstruo. Que sólo espera el momento propicio para salir a la luz y causar estragos.

En Cierto modo, tenía derecho; todos en el colegio respetaban la venganza.

Eso era la historia, una rama de la fabulación que pretendía ser ciencia.

A Criminal is the case of surplus of human energy directed in the wrong direction.

Allá, en el Congo, conviviendo con la injusticia y la violencia, había descubierto la gran mentira que era el colonialismo y había empezado a sentirse un 'irlandés', es decir, ciudadano de un país ocupado y explotado por un Imperio que había desngrado y desalmado a Irlanda

Hasta la lluvia andaba jodida en este país. Piensa:

A él le parecía que Gertrudis se había convertido con los años en una especie de mueble, que había dejado de ser una persona viviente.

And what do I do?" replied Turk. "What do thirty or forty percent of Dominicans do? Aren't we all working for the government or its businesses? Only the very rich can allow themselves the luxury of not working for Trujillo.

Fue entonces cuando tuvo la idea de los espacios salvadores, la idea de que la civilización no era, no había sido nunca un movimiento, un estado de cosas general, un ambiente que abrazara al conjunto de la sociedad, sino diminutas ciudadelas levantadas a lo largo del tiempo y el espacio que resistían el asalto permanente de esa fuerza instintiva, violenta, obtusa, fea, destructora y bestial que dominaba el mundo y que ahora se había metido en su propio hogar.

Probably there are no longer any societies in which the best people are attracted to civic duties.

con su amante, hacia lejanas comarcas llenas de color, donde a espléndidas ciudades de catedrales de mármol blanco y aguzados campanarios suceden bosques de limoneros, deliciosas aldeas de pescadores y una cabaña tropical rodeada de palmeras: el paisaje y el clima son allí tan torrenciales como la pasión.

Perhaps it was true that because of the disastrous governments that came afterward, many Dominicans missed Trujillo now. 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.

Como disciplina intelectual, dijo, «es aburrido leer a los aliados, a quienes coinciden con nuestros puntos de vista. Más interesante es leer al enemigo, al que pone a prueba la solidez de nuestras defensas.

The simple fact is that he didn't write what he saw but what he felt and believed, what those all around him felt and believed. That's how that whole tangled web of false stories and humbug got woven, becoming so intricate that there is now no way to disentangle it.

In matters concerning God, you have to believe, not reason," Herbert would say. "If you reason, God vanishes like a mouthful of smoke." Roger