Mariette

“patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, The Dream of the Celt

“Fictions exist because of this fact. Because we have only one life, and our desires and fantasies demand a thousand lives. Because the abyss between what we are and what we would like to be has to be bridged somehow. That was why fictions were born: so that, through living this vicarious, transient, precarious, but also passionate and fascinating life that fiction transports us to, we can incorporate the impossible into the possible and our existence can be both reality and unreality, history and fable, concrete life and marvellous adventure.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, The Temptation of the Impossible: Victor Hugo and Les Misérables

“In matters concerning God, you have to believe, not reason,” Herbert would say. “If you reason, God vanishes like a mouthful of smoke.” Roger”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, The Dream of the Celt

“If in this address I were to summon all the writers to whom I owe a few things or a great deal, their shadows would plunge us into darkness. They are innumerable. In addition to revealing the secrets of the storytelling craft, they obliged me to explore the bottomless depths of humanity, admire its heroic deeds and feel horror at its savagery.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, In Praise of Reading and Fiction: The Nobel Lecture