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" When I was at university in the Fifties, Latin America was full of dictators. Trujillo was the emblematic figure because, of course, of his cruelty, corruption, extravagance, and theatricalities. "

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" I love stories, and my life is principally concentrated on stories, but not with a pretense of scientific precision. "

Mario Vargas Llosa

Precision

Stories

Love

" The novels that have fascinated me most are the ones that have reached me less through the channels of the intellect or reason than bewitched me. "

Mario Vargas Llosa

Through

Reason

" Prosperity or egalitarianism - you have to choose. I favor freedom - you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion. "

" Literature is dangerous: it awakens a rebellious attitude in us. "

Mario Vargas Llosa

Dangerous

Literature

" No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing. "

" In fiction, you are not limited by real facts. You can manipulate reality; you can invent without being disloyal to the essence of history. "

" If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know. "

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

" It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around. "

Mario Vargas Llosa

Live

Animals

" Good literature always ends up showing those who read it... the inevitable limitation of all power to fulfill human aspirations and desires. "

" When I was growing up, the Spanish-speaking world was Balkanized. We were isolated. We didn't know what was happening in cultural terms in Ecuador, Colombia and Chile. Nowadays, this has changed a lot - fortunately for writers and readers. There is much more integration. "

Mario Vargas Llosa

Growing

World

" Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories. "

" I don't want to finish my life not being alive. I think that is the saddest thing that can happen to a person. I want to keep living to the end. "

" Eroticism has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me; it is a statement of the individual's sovereignty. "

Mario Vargas Llosa

Pleasure

Own

" Latin America seemed to be a land where there were only dictators, revolutionaries, catastrophes. Now we know that Latin America can produce also artists, musicians, painters, thinkers, and novelists. "

" Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections. "

" Today, everybody is more or less conscious of the total failure of the Cuban revolution to produce wealth, to produce a better standard of living for the Cubans. With the exception of small radical parties, Latin Americans know that it's a brutal dictatorship and the longest in Latin American history. "

" I learnt to read when I was five, and I think that is the most important thing that happened to me. "

" To write is a relief from life's problems. It is a way in which you revenge yourself. In art, the writer achieves utopia. But any attempt to achieve social utopia is bound to catastrophe. If you want a society of saints, the result is hell, repression, totalitarianism, and persecution. "

" There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity. "

" Faulkner was the first novelist I read with pen and paper in hand because his technique stunned me. "

Mario Vargas Llosa

Because

First

" You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be. "

" My three years in politics was very instructive about the way in which the appetite for political power can destroy a human mind, destroy principles and values, and transform people into little monsters. "

" A novel is something, while despair is nothing. "