213 Quotes by Mario Vargas Llosa

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

Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space...

The essential difference between the culture of the past and the entertainment of today is that the products of the former sought to transcend mere present time, to endure, to stay alive for future generations, while the products of the latter are made to be consumed instantly and disappear, like cake or popcorn.

I don’t accept the idea that literature can be just entertainment and that there is no consequences of literature in the real world.

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.

De fiecare data, imi aparea tot mai clar ca unicul lucru pe care doream sa-l fac in viata era sa devin scriitor si astfel mi se intarea convingerea ca singura cale pentru a reusi este aceea de a te darui, trup si suflet, numai literaturii.

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

It’s beautiful, as long as you concentrate on the landscape and the birds, because everything man-made there is ugly.

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?