213 Quotes by Mario Vargas Llosa

I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated.

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

I think if you're impregnated with good literature, with good culture, you're much more difficult to manipulate, and you're much more aware of the dangers that powers represent.

The Nobel prize is a fairytale for a week and a nightmare for a year. You can't imagine the pressure to give interviews, to go to book fairs.

Part of the reasons I have lived the life I have is because I wanted to have an adventurous life. But my best adventures are more literary than political.

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

Only if I reach 100 years old will I write a very complete autobiography. Not before.

What is essential in love is what the French call 'amour fou.' What is that in English? Crazy love? That doesn't sound as beautiful. It's a total kind of love that not only embraces feelings, actions, but a kind of understanding of the world from the perspective of love.

I remember how my world expanded in amazing fashion by that magical operation of translating words into images, and images into stories.