Mario Vargas Llosa

“Literature is a form of permanent insurrection.”

“A writer's job is to tell the truth.”

“It's easy to admire mediocrity, because it's comfortable. But it's a terrible trap.”

“Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella.”

“Nationalism is the culture of the uncultured.”

“The intellectual's first duty is to doubt.”

“Reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life.”

“If you are a writer, you are a writer. It is not a profession, it is a vocation.”

“Culture is all we have, the only thing that can save us from the abyss.”

“Uncertainty is a margin of safety.”

“Eroticism is one of the basic components of human life... To repress it is a great wrong.”

“A society without literature is a society that is brutish and uncivilized.”

“Memory is a snare, a trap that distorts the past.”

“There is no recipe for writing a good novel.”

“Dictatorships are not only terribly cruel, they are also terribly boring.”