Mario Vargas Llosa

“Germany represented the future because it carried no colonial ballast,”

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“Martyrdom is something a Christian resigns himself to, not an end he seeks out.”

— Mario Vargas Llosa

I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness.

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Good literature is absolutely necessary for a society that wants to be free.

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt.

— Mario Vargas Llosa

I would like my novels to be read the way I read the novels I love.

— Mario Vargas Llosa

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

— Mario Vargas Llosa

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

— Mario Vargas Llosa

I think everybody, or the great majority of human beings, have this aspiration to become other: to live a different identity, at…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

North American society could not have reached its state of high development and modernity had it not been an open society.

— Mario Vargas Llosa

In general, I think my freedom of invention is not limited when I use historical characters.

— Mario Vargas Llosa

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

— Mario Vargas Llosa

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

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“In matters concerning God, you have to believe, not reason,” Herbert would say. “If you reason, God vanishes like a mouthful of…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

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

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Part of the reasons I have lived the life I have is because I wanted to have an adventurous life. But my…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

There are people with a lot of prejudice, a lot of fear of the unknown. They think that immigration is a danger,…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“They denied the obvious with the same boldness because all of them believed that harvesting rubber and making money was a Christian…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Sartre said that wars were acts and that, with literature, you could produce changes in history. Now, I don't think literature doesn't…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

In general, a writer would like to think that the best book that he has written is the book that he is…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

I completely believe that - literature for me is a way of life. That's probably true of all writers or all artists.…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

I was absolutely convinced that I wouldn't win the Nobel Prize. My impression was that the Nobel Prize in Literature was given…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Once upon a time, there was a boy who learned to read at the age of 5. This changed his life. Owing…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“Screen fictions are intense in their immediacy and ephemeral in terms of their effects: they seize us and then release us almost…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“He had made efforts and spent a good amount of his scant funds to pay for their passages to Europe and support…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Nothing better protects a human being against the stupidity of prejudice, racism, religious or political sectarianism, and exclusivist nationalism than this truth…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“He undressed and, wearing slippers and a robe, went to the bathroom to shave. He turned on the radio. They read the…

— 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…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“cover the twenty-five in sacks soaked in gasoline. Then they set fire to them. Shrieking, transformed into human torches, some managed to…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Reading good literature is an experience of pleasure...but it is also an experience of learning what and how we are, in our…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“a station chief, admonishing him for “killing Indians just for sport,” knowing that laborers were scarce and reminding him that one should…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“In this country, in one way or another, everyone had bean, was, or would be part of the regime. "The worst thing…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“At times I wondered whether writing was not a solipsistic luxury in countries like mine, where there were scant readers, so many…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“[Immigrants] who come from anywhere there is hunger, unemployment, oppression, and violence and who clandestinely cross the borders of countries that are…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“It is the case that, albeit to a lesser extent, all fictions make their readers live "the impossible", taking them out of…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“No lo entiendes, Urania. Hay muchas cosas de la Era que has llegado a entender; algunas, al principio, te parecían inextricables, pero,…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

“Why would anyone who is deeply satisfied with reality, with real life as it is lived, dedicate himself to something as insubstantial…

— Mario Vargas Llosa

Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.

— Mario Vargas Llosa

I am in favor of economic freedom, but I am not a conservative.

— Mario Vargas Llosa