Mario Vargas Llosa

 

 

“Its easy to know what you want to say, but not to say it”

 

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

 

“Science is still only a candle glimmering in a great pitch-dark cavern.”

 

“Death isn't enough. It doesn't remove the stain. But a slap, a whiplash, square on the face, does. Because a man's face is as sacred as his mother or his wife.”

 

“Revolution will free society of its afflictions, while science will free the individual of his.”


From "Conversation in the Cathedral": "From the doorway of La Cronica Santiago looks at the Avenida Tacna without love: cars, uneven and faded buildings, the gaudy skeletons of posters floating in the mist, the gray midday."

"Inside, under the zinc roof, crowded on rough benches and around crude tables, a noisy voracious crowd. Two Chinese in shirtleeves behind the bar watch the copper faces, the angular features that are chewing and drinking, and a frantic little man from the Andes in a shabby apron serves steaming bowls of soup, bottles, platters of rice. Plenty of feeling, plenty of kisses, plenty of love boom from a multicolored jukebox and in the back, behind the smoke, the noise, the solid smell of food and liquor, the dancing swarms of flies, there is a punctured wall - stones, shacks, a strip of river, the leaden sky - and an ample woman bathed in sweat manipulates pots and pans surrounded by the sputter grill. There's an empty table besides the jukebox and among the scars on the wood one can make out a heart pierced by an arrow, a woman's name: Saturnina."


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