Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa (b 1936), full name Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquess of Vargas Llosa, is a Peruvian writer, novelist, critic, and essayist is also known for writing short stories. He was a critical neorealist whose works tend to expose philosophical uncertainties and decay of values.

Wisdom & Quotes

• I think in a country like mine, violence is at the root of all human relations.
• The worst thing that can happen to an artist is to be subsidised by the state. It leads to an intellectual and artistic castration.
• No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible.

- "Latin America: The Democratic Opinion", speech to the Trilateral Commission, San Francisco, California (March 1990)

• The truths that seem most truthful, if you look at them from all sides, if you look at them close up, turn out to be either half truths or lies.

- Who Killed Palimino Molero?

• Violence represents the worst kind of conformism.

Lily Tomlin