“إن ما يفسّر البطولة خير تفسير ليست الدوافع السامية دائماً. هناك التحامل ، ضيق العقل و أشد ما يمكن تصوره من الأفكار غباءً.”

“At times I wondered whether writing was not a solipsistic luxury in countries like mine, where there were scant readers, so many people who were poor and illiterate, so much injustice, and where culture was a privilege of the few. These doubts, however, never stifled my calling, and I always kept writing even during those periods when earning a living absorbed most of my time. I believe I did the right thing, since if, for literature to flourish, it was first necessary for a society to achieve high culture, freedom, prosperity, and justice, it never would have existed. But thanks to literature, to the consciousness it shapes, the desires and longings it inspires, and our disenchantment with reality when we return from the journey to a beautiful fantasy, civilization is now less cruel than when storytellers began to humanize life with their fables. We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal.”

“En eso, estalló la balacera a sus espaldas. Una gritería ensordecedora se levantó alrededor; la gente corría entre los autos, los carros se trepaban a las veredas. Antonio oyó voces histéricas: «¡Ríndanse, carajo!». «¡Están rodeados, pendejos!» Al ver que Juan Tomás, exhausto, se paraba, se paró también a su lado y comenzó a disparar. Lo hacía a ciegas, porque caliés y guardias se escudaban detrás de los Volkswagen, atravesados como parapetos en la pista, interrumpiendo el tráfico. Vio caer a Juan Tomás de rodillas, y lo vio llevarse la pistola a la boca, pero no alcanzó a dispararse porque varios impactos lo tumbaron. A él le habían caído muchas balas ya, pero no estaba muerto. «No estoy muerto, coño, no estoy.» Había disparado todos los tiros de su cargador y, en el suelo, trataba de deslizar la mano al bolsillo para tragarse la estricnina. La maldita mano pendeja no le obedeció. No hacía falta, Antonio. Veía las estrellas brillantes de la noche que empezaba, veía la risueña cara de Tavito y se sentía joven otra vez.”

“I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano’s class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space...”

“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.” Mario Vargas Llosa”

“Scrivere un romanzo è una cerimonia che somiglia allo streap-tease. Come la ragazza che, sotto impudichi riflettori, si libera dei propri indumenti e mostra, a uno a uno, i suoi incanti segreti, così anche il romanziere mette a nudo la propria intimità in pubblico attraverso i suoi romanzi.”

“No lo entiendes, Urania. Hay muchas cosas de la Era que has llegado a entender; algunas, al principio, te parecían inextricables, pero, a fuerza de leer, escuchar, cotejar y pensar, has llegado a comprender que tantos millones de personas, machacadas por la propaganda, por la falta de información, embrutecidas por el adoctrinamiento, el aislamiento, despojadas de libre albedrío, de voluntad y hasta de curiosidad por el miedo y la práctica del servilismo y la obsecuencia, llegaran a divinizar a Trujillo. No solo a temerlo, sino a quererlo, como llegan a querer los hijos a los padres autoritarios, a convencerse de que azotes y castigos son por su bien.”