Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.
A novel is something, while despair is nothing.
Violence represents the worst kind of conformism.
Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it
We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.
I am not going to participate in professional politics again.
I am in favor of economic freedom, but I am not a conservative.
Literature is dangerous: it awakens a rebellious attitude in us.
One can't fight with oneself, for this battle has only one loser.
Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.
Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern.
It is rare and almost impossible for a novel to have only one narrator.
Good literature is absolutely necessary for a society that wants to be free.
There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.
No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.
A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be
I think in a country like mine, violence is at the root of all human relations.
Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt.
I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness.
The secret to a masterpiece is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.
It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!
Only if I reach 100 years old will I write a very complete autobiography. Not before.
I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.
Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.
In general, I think my freedom of invention is not limited when I use historical characters.
Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his.
A good novel is a conjunction of many factors, the main of which is without a doubt, hard work.
If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.
Memory is a snare, pure and simple; it alters, it subtly rearranges the past to fit the present.
Faulkner was the first novelist I read with pen and paper in hand because his technique stunned me.
I learnt to read when I was five, and I think that is the most important thing that happened to me.
Journalism is a way of voicing opinion, of participating in the political, social, or cultural debate.
When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon.
I have been always fascinated and seduced by history, which I think is very close, very close to literature.
Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." (spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)
I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharan, in Miraflores.
I think yellow journalism is something that appears everywhere, in the underdeveloped and developed worlds alike.
I love stories, and my life is principally concentrated on stories, but not with a pretense of scientific precision.
North American society could not have reached its state of high development and modernity had it not been an open society.
I think that literature has the important effect of creating free, independent, critical citizens who cannot be manipulated.
I wouldn't reread Sartre today. Compared to everything I've read since, his fiction seems dated and has lost much of its value.
Do the rhetorical quarrels of bourgeois political parties have anything to do with the interests of the humble and downtrodden?
But what do I have? The things I'm told and the things I tell, that's all. And as far as I know, that never yet made anyone fly.
The worst thing that can happen to an artist is to be subsidized by the state. It leads to an intellectual and artistic castration.
I don't accept the idea that literature can be just entertainment and that there is no consequences of literature in the real 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 remember how my world expanded in amazing fashion by that magical operation of translating words into images, and images into stories.
In fiction, you are not limited by real facts. You can manipulate reality; you can invent without being disloyal to the essence of history.
Good literature always ends up showing those who read it... the inevitable limitation of all power to fulfill human aspirations and desires.