If you are killed because you are a writer, that’s the maximum expression of respect, you know.
Meaning of the quote
The quote suggests that if someone is killed just for being a writer, it means that their writing is so powerful and respected that people are willing to go to extreme measures to silence them. It implies that being a writer is so important and influential that it can even put your life at risk, which is the ultimate sign of respect for your work.
About Mario Vargas Llosa
Mario Vargas Llosa is a renowned Peruvian novelist, journalist, and essayist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010. He has been a prominent figure in Latin American literature and has written numerous acclaimed works, including ‘The Time of the Hero’ and ‘Conversation in The Cathedral’. Vargas Llosa has also been actively involved in politics, running for the Peruvian presidency in 1990.
More quotes from Mario Vargas Llosa
There is an incompatibility between literary creation and political activity.
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Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.
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It isn’t true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.
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You cannot teach creativity – how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be.
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Since it is impossible to know what’s really happening, we Peruvians lie, invent, dream and take refuge in illusion. Because of these strange circumstances, Peruvian life, a life in which so few actually do read, has become literary.
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If you are killed because you are a writer, that’s the maximum expression of respect, you know.
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Prosperity or egalitarianism – you have to choose. I favor freedom – you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion.
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No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.
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Eroticism has its own moral justification because it says that pleasure is enough for me; it is a statement of the individual’s sovereignty.
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Writing a book is a very lonely business. You are totally cut off from the rest of the world, submerged in your obsessions and memories.
Peruvian novelist and writer