In my case, literature is a kind of revenge. It's something that gives me what real life can't give me - all the adventures, all the suffering. All the experiences I can only live in the imagination, literature completes.
Mario Vargas LlosaRead
Literature is dangerous: it awakens a rebellious attitude in us.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature provokes critical thinking and challenges the status quo.
This quote highlights the transformative power of literature, suggesting that it stirs a sense of rebellion and critical questioning within individuals. By engaging with literary works, readers often challenge societal norms and explore new ideas, which can lead to change and innovation in thought and behavior.
Themes
LiteratureRebellionCritical ThinkingPowerIdeas
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club discussion about social issues, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of literature in fostering critical dialogue.
More from Mario Vargas Llosa
All quotes βI think if you're impregnated with good literature, with good culture, you're much more difficult to manipulate, and you're much more aware of the dangers that powers represent.
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Part of the reasons I have lived the life I have is because I wanted to have an adventurous life. But my best adventures are more literary than political.
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I don't want to finish my life not being alive. I think that is the saddest thing that can happen to a person. I want to keep living to the end.
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Today, everybody is more or less conscious of the total failure of the Cuban revolution to produce wealth, to produce a better standard of living for the Cubans. With the exception of small radical parties, Latin Americans know that it's a brutal dictatorship and the longest in Latin American history.
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When I was growing up, the Spanish-speaking world was Balkanized. We were isolated. We didn't know what was happening in cultural terms in Ecuador, Colombia and Chile. Nowadays, this has changed a lot - fortunately for writers and readers. There is much more integration.
Mario Vargas LlosaRead
Similar quotes
I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.
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I have said that each aspect of the novel demands a different quality of the reader. Well, the prophetic aspect demands two qualities: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour.
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Perhaps they were looking for passion; perhaps they delved into this book as into a mysterious parcel - a gift box at the bottom of which, hidden in layers of rustling tissue paper, lay something they'd always longed for but couldn't ever grasp.
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When we talk about books, we rarely talk about the economic side of writing, especially of writing literary works, and that, at base, it's a pretty costly enterprise.
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The great thing about a short story is that it doesn't have to trawl through someone's whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side.
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