If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know.

It isn't true that convicts live like animals: animals have more room to move around.

Life is a shitstorm, in which art is our only umbrella." (spoken by character in a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa)

I was very young and lived with my grandparents in a villa with white walls in the Calle Ocharan, in Miraflores.

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

I convinced her that her first loyalty isn't to other people, but to her own feelings.

I always write a draft version of the novel in which I try to develop, not the story, not the plot, but the possibilities of the plot. I write without thinking much, trying to overcome all kinds of self-criticism, without stopping, without giving any consideration to the style or structure of the novel, only putting down on paper everything that can be used as raw material, very crude material for later development in the story.