Vargas Llosa tells me he is starting a new novel, and I wonder if he will ever stop writing, as Philip Roth did as he approached 80. “Writing is what I do. It is my life,” he replies immediately. “To be alive but dead is the worst possible thing, although it happens to many people.” Vargas Llosa then bows his head low to the table in a gesture of the abundant grace and humanity that I had not expected to see two hours earlier. “In fact, I hope to die writing.”
John Paul Rathbone in the FT