"Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern."
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Quote collection
Mario Vargas Llosa quotes (page 3 of 4)
65 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I have a chest full of all the insults, villainies, and infamies a man is capable of withstanding. . . . If you become famous, you will have to go through that."
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"I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharan, in Miraflores."
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"There are many things behind a good novel, but in particular there is a lot of work - a lot of patience, a lot of stubbornness, and a critical spirit."
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"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."
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"A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be"
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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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"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."
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"It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator."
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"No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible."
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"I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness."
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"I completely believe that - literature for me is a way of life. That's probably true of all writers or all artists. I think in the end this kind of activity absorbs one in such a way that it becomes one's way of life."
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"I think in a country like mine, violence is at the root of all human relations."
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"writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!"
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"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."
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"Men do not live by truth alone; they also need lies: those that they invent freely, not those that are imposed on them; those that appear as they are, not smuggled in beneath the clothes of history. Fiction enriches their existence, completes them and, fleetingly, compensates them for this tragic condition which is our lot: always to desire and dream more than we can actually achieve."
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"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."
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"Liberty is inseparable from social justice, and those who dissociate them, sacrificing the first with the purpose of attaining the second more quickly, are the true barbarians of our time."
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"In general, I think my freedom of invention is not limited when I use historical characters."
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"I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature."
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