Mario Vargas Llosa Quotes

Why should those persons who used literature as an ornament or pretext have any more right to be considered real writers than Pedro Camacho, who lived only to write? Because they had read or at least knew that they should have read Proust, Faulkner, Joyce, while Pedro Camacho was very nearly illiterate?

Since it is impossible to know what’s really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent, dream and take refuge in illusion. Because of these strange circumstances, Peruvian life, a life in which so few actually do read, has become literary.

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.

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

There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.