Vargas Quotes

It's less about coming out and more about letting people in. I learned that you come out to let people in. The reality is that the closet doesn't only hide you from strangers, the closet also hides you from people you love. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

My impression is that life - a big word, I know - inflicts themes on a writer through certain experiences that impress themselves on his consciousness or subconscious and later compel him to shake himself free by turning them into stories. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Demographically speaking, young white people are not in the majority in this country; they're in the minority. My question is, if they're not the majority anymore, then what happens? How do things change? Or do they change at all? ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

At the end of the day, stories connect us, not politics. And there's so many stories out there waiting to be told. It's just a matter of who's out there listening. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

If we are truly fortunate, we have employers who did not abandon us, family who stood by us, and perhaps someone who helped us find our way back, who never forget that beneath all the appalling behavior there was a human being. ~ Elizabeth Vargas

In the civilization of our times, it is normal, and almost obligatory, for cookery and fashion to take up most of the culture sections, for chefs and fashion designers now enjoy the prominence that before was given to scientists, composers and philosophers. Gas burners, stoves and catwalks meld, in the cultural coordinates of our time, with books, laboratories and operas, while TV stars and great footballers exert the sort of influence over habits, taste and fashion that was previously the domain of teachers and thinkers ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

From a cultural point of view the richest moments in civilization, in history, have occurred when the boundaries separating popular and creative literature disappear, and literature becomes simultaneously both things-something that enriches all audiences, something that can satisfy all kinds of mentalities and knowledge and education, and at the same time is creative and artistic and popular. Dickens, Hugo, and Dumas are extraordinary cases in point; and in Spain in the nineteenth century there are many other examples, such as Perez Galdos. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

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 ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

The last thing reporters and editors want to be told is what to do and how to write. They don't want to be some politically correct, Orwellian, kind of like "you're telling me how to write about ... ?" ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

The symbol of a setting for a Hemingway story is a boxing ring; for Borges, a library. On the other hand I think Nabokov was a writer quite close to Borges. He had the same rich literary culture, moved with great ease in different languages and traditions, and had a playful approach to literature-literature as an intellectual game, through which, of course, the real truths could appear. But apparently the game was for Nabokov just an exercise devoid of moral substance. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa

You can't go through life trying to please everyone. ~ Jacob Vargas

The disappearance of any minimal consensus about aesthetic value means that in this field confusion reigns and will continue to reign for a long time, since it is now not possible to discern with any degree of objectivity what it is to have talent or to lack talent, what is beautiful and what is ugly, what work represents something new and durable and what is just a will-o'-the-wisp. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

I consider myself a student of life. ~ Jacob Vargas

I am not a lobbyist. I am not a political activist. I am not a leader, as far as I'm concerned. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Rita Vargas caught her breath - the dark was spilling out of the mountains as the sun vanished in the west. The deep purple/blue shadows spread out on the water of the Caribe. The ocean was shadowy, yet at the same time, glowing. The massif green on one side, and velvety black on the other. And below, the lights of the cities scattered and burned, white, yellow, white, looking like gems. Stars.
She still recalls it as one of the most beautiful sights she'd ever witnessed, as if the coast of Veracruz were somehow welcoming its sons home. It would have astounded the dead if the could have looked out the windows. Why would they ever have left such a beautiful home for the dry bones and spikes of the desert? If they could have seen what she saw, they might have stayed home. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

I look at emotional pain as something we need to go through in order to grow and learn. ~ Jacob Vargas

Instead of speaking of justice and injustice, freedom and oppression, classless society and class society, they talked in terms of God and the Devil. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

When people saw that the film was called 'White People,' many got very defensive. I've been getting some very interesting emails - and I'm used to hate mail, believe me. I think this idea that we grouped white people together is offensive to people. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

You know, I'm one of millions of undocumented people in this country who are living kind of under the shadows. And in many ways, coming out, it was my way of - at the end of the day, I think we have to tell the truth about this immigration system. And because of that, I had to tell the truth about myself. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

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

Get outside of their comfort zone and try something new. You never truly grow when you're too comfortable. ~ Jacob Vargas

Why would anyone who is deeply satisfied with reality, with real life as it is lived, dedicate himself to something as insubstantial and fanciful as the creation of fictional realities? Naturally, those who rebel against lie as it is, using their ability to invent different lives and different people, may do so for any number of reasons, honorable or dishonorable, generous or selfish, complex or banal. The nature of this basic questioning of reality, which to my mind lies at the heart of every literary calling, doesn't matter at all. What matters is that the rejection be strong enough to fuel the enthusiasm for a task as quixotic as tilting at windmills – the slight-of-hand replacement of the concrete, objective world of life as it is lived with the subtle and ephemeral world of fiction. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa

Frida Kahlo taught me a lot without ever bragging about anything. ~ Chavela Vargas

I think in a country like mine, violence is at the root of all human relations. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Dear America, is this what you really want? Do you even know what is happening in your name? ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

I swear to fuck, Alex. If you keep playing with your asshole I'm going to play with it for you."
"You were touching yourself."
"I creamed my jeans like a schoolgirl, Alex. You came with no touching. You looked like... You're a natural."
"A natural," Alex repeats, trying to wrap his mind around that. Natural porn performer? Natural bottom? Neither really sounds that prestigious, but Peter's talking about it like he just won the World Series of Taking Big Cocks Up the Butt. ~ Emory Vargas

Everyone has an opinion when it comes to immigration - strong, intense opinions. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Independent of politics, the changing narrative on immigration is directly correlated to the fact that we have new technologies that are allowing people to talk to each other and tell their own stories and organize themselves. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

The fact of the matter is, this country is not going to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. What are we supposed to do with them? What are we supposed to do with these kids? ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Left-leaning bloggers have had a tremendous impact on the Democratic Party. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

In 2007, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would become a 'platform,' meaning that outside developers could start creating applications that would run inside the site. It worked. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Even though what I enjoy most is literature, I would not want to live only in a world of fiction, cut off from the rest of life. No - I want to always have a foot in the street, to be inmersed in the activities of my contemporaries, in the times, in the place where I live. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

There are people with a lot of prejudice, a lot of fear of the unknown. They think that immigration is a danger, when really it is a solution. This is an interesting issue, because it will be a central question of our time. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Fiction is a lie covering up a deep truth. ~ Maria Vargas Llosa

We cannot change the politics issue until we change the culture around it; until we talk about what parents do for their kids as an act of love. That's a cultural conversation. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Honor, vengeance, that rigorous religion, those punctilicious codes of conduct - how to explain their existence here, at the end of the world, among people who possessed nothing but the rags and the lice they had on them? ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

The film 'Documented,' a project of the nonprofit and nonpartisan Define American campaign, is about my families: the family I was blessed to be born into, and the family of friends, mentors and allies that I found when I moved to the United States at 12, a Filipino kid trying to make sense of my new home in America. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

I don't have a set routine, but I try to squeeze in a workout every day, whether it's taking a hike, taking a Pilates class, or just putting in a workout DVD. Whatever it takes! ~ Jacob Vargas

I had to fight to be me and get respect, and to carry that stigma, for me, is pride. Carrying the tag of lesbian. I'm not bragging, I'm not preaching, but I don't deny it . I had to face society, the Church, which says damn gay people ... it's absurd. How do you judge someone who has been born that way. I did not study to be a lesbian. Neither was it taught to me. I was born this way. Since I opened my eyes to the world. I've never slept with a man. Never. I'm pure, I don't have to be ashamed ... My Gods made me so. ~ Chavela Vargas

The naive idea that, through education, one can transmit culture to all of society is destroying 'higher culture', because the only way of achieving this universal democratization of culture is by impoverishing culture, making it ever more superficial. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

In general, I think my freedom of invention is not limited when I use historical characters. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

When I'm writing, I can always play around with tense. I can always make past present. I can always kind of manipulate, and I can always be delusional in a way that's completely self-serving. With film, it's like, the camera can't really lie. It can manipulate to a certain extent. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

I think there's nothing better in the world than a spirited discussion about the Bible and Jesus and God and the Catholic faith, or the Jewish faith, or the Muslim faith - any religion. ~ Elizabeth Vargas

When you're undocumented, you're supposed to keep your head down and be quiet and pay taxes, social security - even though people don't know that we do those things - and not say anything. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

An inseparable complement to the exoticism in his stories is the erudition, the bits of specialized knowledge, usually literary, but also philological, historical, philosophical, or theological. This knowledge, which borders on but never oversteps the bounds of pedantry, is quite freely flaunted. But the point is not to show off Borges's wide acquaintance with different cultures. Rather, it is a key element in his creative strategy, the aim of which was to imbue his stories with a certain colorfulness, to endow them with an atmosphere all their own. In other words Borges's learning by his use of exotic settings and characters fulfills an exclusively literary function, which, in twisting the erudition around and making it sometimes decorative, sometimes symbolic, subordinates it to the task at hand. In this way Borges's theology, philosophy, linguistics and so forth, lose their original character, take on the quality of fiction, and, becoming part and parcel of a literary fantasy, are turned into literature. ~ Mario Vargas Llosa

He undressed and, wearing slippers and a robe, went to the bathroom to shave. He turned on the radio. They read the newspapers on the Dominican Voice and Caribbean Radio. Until a few years ago the news bulletins had begun at five. But when his brother Petan, the owner of the Dominican Voice, found out that he woke at four, he moved the newscasts up an hour. The other stations followed suit. They knew he listened to the radio while he shaved, bathed, and dressed, and they were painstakingly careful. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

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. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

I've never even been to bed with a man. Never. That's how pure I am; I have nothing to be ashamed of. My gods made me the way I am. ~ Chavela Vargas

If you are killed because you are a writer, that's the maximum expression of respect, you know. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Light literature, along with light cinema and light art, give the reader and the viewer the comfortable impression that they are cultured, revolutionary, modern and in the vanguard without having to make the slightest intellectual effort. Culture that purports to be avant-garde and iconoclastic instead offers conformity in its worst forms: smugness and self-satisfaction. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Because in the civilization of the spectacle, intellectuals are of interest only if they play the fashion game and become clowns. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Facebook's headquarters is a two-story building at the end of a quiet, tree-lined street. Zuckerberg nicknamed it the Bunker. Facebook has grown so fast that this is the company's fifth home in six years - the third in Palo Alto. There is virtually no indication outside of the Bunker's tenant. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

I couldn't imagine any other way of living, outside of books, outside my work. Which doesn't mean I am not interested in other things, of course - I am interested in many things. But the center, the crux, is always literature. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

The world of fantasy fills the gaps in people's knowledge. ~ Fred Vargas

What hurts is not being homosexual, but they tell it in your face as if you were a plague. ~ Chavela Vargas

A person who does not read, or reads little, or reads only trash, is a person with an impediment: he can speak much but he will say little, because his vocabulary is deficient in the means for self-expression.
This is not only a verbal limitation. It represents also a limitation in intellect and imagination. It is a poverty of thought, for the simple reason that ideas, the concepts through which we grasp the secrets of our condition, do not exist apart from words. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

For now, for this year, I need to be a good mother. ~ Elizabeth Vargas

I was falling in love.
I am losing my father.
With Emilio Vargas.
To smoke and shadow.
My heart fluttered.
My heart aches.
To feel it.
To deny it.
Life.
Death.
Possibilities.
Endings ~ Sarah Ockler

they knew what we're doing for them, they'd kiss our feet. But mentally they are closer to the crocodile and the hippopotamus than to you or me. That's why we decide what is good for them and have them sign those contracts. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

I'm praying we don't go to war with Iraq. If we do, I may have to go back to work earlier. ~ Elizabeth Vargas

It's estimated that one million girls in India 'disappear' every year. ~ Elizabeth Vargas

Borges's world is as grounded in the changing nature of existence, that common predicament of the human species, as any literary world that has lasted. How could it be otherwise? No work of fiction that turns its back on life or that is incapable of illuminating life has ever attained durability. What is singular about Borges is that in his world the existential, the historical, sex, psychology, feelings, instincts, and so forth, have been dissolved and reduced to an exclusively intellectual dimension; and life, that boiling, chaotic turmoil, reaches the reader sublimated and conceptualized, transformed into literary myth through the filter of Borges, a filter of such perfect logic that it sometimes appears not to distill life to its essence but to suppress it altogether. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Kippenger suppressed a grin
I could've sworn he did. Without looking at anyone, he said, "Jargon wrote, 'You'll get nothing from me, ever, you dog-breath, rotted corpse of a king.'"
Vargas flowered at me. In return, I smiled and looked around the room, rather proud of myself for that. ~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

Roger reached the conclusion that the hero of his childhood and youth was one of the most unscrupulous villains the West had excreted onto the continent of Africa. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

I completely believe that - literature for me is a way of life. That's probably true of all writers or all artists. I think in the end this kind of activity absorbs one in such a way that it becomes one's way of life. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

General Mario Vargas Salinas, now retired from Bolivia's Eighth Army Division, was one of the young army officers present at Guevara's burial. It was his duty to accompany an old dump truck carrying the bodies of the six dead rebels, including that of "Che" Guevara, to the airstrip in Vallegrande, Bolivia. Knowing that the facts surrounding the burials were leaking out, he decided that after 28 years the world should know what had happened to "Che" Guevara's body. At the time, Captain Vargas, who had also led the ambush in which Tamara "Tania" Bunke, Guevara's lover, was shot dead, said that Guevara was buried early on the morning of October 11th, 1967, at the end of the town's landing strip. After the gruesome facts became known, the Bolivian government ordered the army to find Guevara's remains for a proper burial.
General Gary Prado Salmón, retired, had been the commander of the unit that had captured Guevara. He confirmed General Vargas' statement and added that the guerrilla fighters had been burned, before dumping their bodies into a mass grave, dug by a bulldozer, at the end of the Vallegrande airstrip. He explained that the body of "Che" Guevara had been buried in a separate gravesite under the runway. The morning after the burials, "Che" Guevara's brother arrived in Vallegrande, hoping to see his brother's remains. Upon asking, he was told by the police that it was too late. Talking to some of the army officers, he was told lies or perhaps just differing account ~ Hank Bracker

For Filipino Americans, it's a battle for recognition, for identity in a culture where, for the mainstream, Asians tend to fade into a monochromatic racialized 'other.' ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Vargas isn't supposed to be faithful to a woman he hasn't slept with! Vargas only wants to sleep with Dr. Gomez, Lupe. ~ John Irving

Six months ago, I traveled to India to see firsthand what the prime minister of that country calls a national shame. It is the systematic, widespread, shocking elimination of India's baby girls. Some 50,000 female fetuses are aborted every month in India. ~ Elizabeth Vargas

Living is worth the effort if only because without life we could not read or imagine stories. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

I am a friend of life, at 80 life tells me to behave like a woman and not like an old woman. ~ Chavela Vargas

I believe fundamentally in the kindness of the American people because I have been a beneficiary of it. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

You have to do what you have to do. I wanted to work. I wanted to prove that I was worthy of being here ... and I was gonna do whatever it took to prove that. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

When I was young, when I started to write, we were totally convinced that literature was a kind of weapon. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

As you watch 'Documented' on CNN, I ask you, my fellow Americans: What do you want to do with me? What do you want to do with us? How do you define American? ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

As a newcomer to America who learned to 'speak American' by watching movies, I firmly believe that to change the politics of immigration and citizenship, we must change culture - the way we portray undocumented people like me and our role in society. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

It's beautiful, as long as you concentrate on the landscape and the birds, because everything man-made there is ugly. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

ADAMSBERG WAS NOT A MAN WHO WENT IN FOR EMOTION: he skirted around strong feelings with caution, like swifts who only brush past windows with their wings, never going in, because they know it will be difficult to get out. He had often found dead birds in the village houses back home, imprudent visitors who had ventured inside and never again found their way back to the open air. Adamsberg considered that when it came to love, humans were no wiser than birds. ~ Fred Vargas

To me, politics is culture. I became a journalist, and later a filmmaker, to get to know my new country and my volatile place in it as a gay, undocumented Filipino-American. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

The story of undocumented immigrants in this country is not just about undocumented immigrants. It's about the country as a whole, and it's about us being able to tell the truth about where we are with this issue because we haven't been telling the truth about where we are with this issue. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

The Internet is changing the way we think of our relationship with government; it has the potential to bring to life what Abraham Lincoln said about the presidency being an instrument of the people. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

We must fight white supremacy wherever it exists, within both progressive and conservative circles. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Jesus kinda fools around and gives you parables. He doesn't oftentimes say exactly what he means. But in Matthew 25, he's very, very clear. And he delineates what it takes to get into the Kingdom of Heaven very, very clearly. And he says how you treat the least among us, the least of our brothers, that's how you treat Him. ~ Juan Vargas

One of the most damaging myths of our time is that poor countries live in poverty because of a conspiracy of the rich countries, who arrange things so as to keep them underdeveloped, in order to exploit them. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

Since I got to this country when I was 12, I've been obsessed with this idea of whiteness and blackness because I realized I was neither. For me, it was so important to me to make a film that focused on whiteness because you wouldn't have blackness if you didn't have whiteness. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Nothing better protects a human being against the stupidity of prejudice, racism, religious or political sectarianism, and exclusivist nationalism than this truth that invariably appears in great literature: that men and women of all nations and places are essentially equal, and only injustice sows among them discrimination, fear, and exploitation. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

A lot of our so-called Latino leaders are gutless. I talk to these cry-baby Latino leaders, and they say they can't win elections until Latinos are a majority. ~ Juan Vargas

Citizenship to me is more than a piece of paper. Citizenship is also about character. I am an American. We're just waiting for our country to recognize it. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

I'm sure the president doesn't enjoy being called deporter-in-chief. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

Well, lion tamers are probably difficult to live with - I suppose there's no small amount of testosterone involved in taming lions, Vargas said, shrugging. ~ John Irving

I was never afraid of anything because I never hurt anyone. I was always an old drunk.
[Mexico City concert, June 2011] ~ Chavela Vargas

While in high school, I worked part time at Subway, then at the front desk of the local YMCA, then at a tennis club, until I landed an unpaid internship at 'The Mountain View Voice,' my hometown newspaper. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

In many ways, I think I've always overcompensated. I was always almost too careful, because I knew if anybody ever found any way to doubt my work, then they'd start picking my life apart, too. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

People always think that they'll never break. They'll never give in, CIA operatives somehow crack, but not them ~ Kitty Thomas

Humanity is not some box I should have to check. ~ Jose Antonio Vargas

This "manna from heaven" was being squandered because of the laziness and stupidity of the savages who refused to work as harvesters of latex and obliged the planters to go to the tribes and take them by force. Which meant a great loss of time and money for the enterprises. "Well, ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa