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

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

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

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

No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.
Mario Vargas Llosa

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

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.
Mario Vargas Llosa

There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.
Mario Vargas Llosa

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.
Mario Vargas Llosa

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.
Mario Vargas Llosa