Mariette

“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

“What about order? Stability? Security? I’ve tried to keep you away from unpleasant things. But don’t tell me you don’t know how peace is achieved. With how much sacrifice and how much blood. Be grateful that I’ve allowed you to see the other side and devote yourself to the good, while I, Abbes, Lieutenant Peña Rivera, and others kept the country in order so you could write your poems and your speeches. I’m sure that with your acute intelligence, you understand me perfectly.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, The Feast of the Goat

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

“The simple fact is that he didn’t write what he saw but what he felt and believed, what those all around him felt and believed. That’s how that whole tangled web of false stories and humbug got woven, becoming so intricate that there is now no way to disentangle it.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, The War of the End of the World