Gary Shteyngart Quotes - Page 2

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• That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Tyrants, Attention, Mercy

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.163, Granta Books

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• I was really not a good student, and I felt that shame every day. That's one of the reasons I started smoking pot and drinking daily.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Drinking, Smoking, Students

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

• My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Talking, Parent, Kind

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Vodka has a huge history in Russia, in that it's almost like a currency. It's the one thing that keeps the country in the dark ages and having a rollicking good time.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Country, Dark, Russia

  "Gary Shteyngart's Rules for Vodka Drinking" by Ben Detrick, www.esquire.com. August 9, 2010.

  6 Copy quote

• If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Russia, Stills, Ifs

  "Gary Shteyngart: 'Humour is my multiple warhead delivery system'". Interview with Peter Conrad, www.theguardian.com. September 4, 2010.

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• It is a capital insult in this country not to make love to a naked woman, even if she is related to you.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Country, Making Love, Naked

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Absurdistan”, p.116, Granta Books

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• Communications devices were always used to effect change, to effect revolution. Telephone, telegraph - these all seemed like very big enhancements at the time.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Communication, Enhancement, Telephones

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• Getting out of Russia was the best thing my parents did. I mean, that country will never amount to anything.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Country, Mean, Russia

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Life for young American college graduates is a festive affair. Free of having to support their families, they mostly have gay parties on rooftops where they reflect at length upon their quirky electronic childhoods and sometimes kiss each other on the lips and neck.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Party, Gay, Kissing

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Absurdistan”, p.41, Granta Books

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• My parents were constantly afraid they would lose their jobs. The idea that we were always a paycheck away from disaster was drilled into me.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Jobs, Ideas, Parent

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• I write almost entirely in bed or on a couch with my feet up on the coffee table. I feel most creative when Im looking out the window, and my bed and couch have nice views of the New York skyline.

  Gary Shteyngart

  New York, Nice, Coffee

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• You can't have a Russian household without vodka. It's just something to wash everything down with. I can't remember a time when I didn't drink vodka, either in Russia or here. I don't think there's ever a wrong time to start drinking it. My ancestors drank it, and if I ever have any children, they'll be drinking it.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Children, Drinking, Thinking

  "Gary Shteyngart's Rules for Vodka Drinking" by Ben Detrick, www.esquire.com. August 9, 2010.

  11 Copy quote

• I love to act, I've always wanted to be an actor. I think that acting and fiction go nicely together - being able to visualize language as something you perform, not just something that's there on the page.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Thinking, Acting, Together

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Writing, Way, Right Now

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• If my mother hadn't tried to sell me chicken Kiev cutlets for $1.40 after I graduated from college, maybe I would've been the lawyer she wanted me to be.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Mother, College, Kiev

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• The greatest books in Russian literature are satires. Gogol's Dead Souls, for example, is a very over-the-top satire about life in Russia. I think it's the thing we do best.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Book, Thinking, Soul

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Pals, Mediocrity, Matter

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.18, Granta Books

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• I feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I'm not in love with him.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Safe, Feels, Ideals

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.64, Granta Books

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• That's what I always liked about science fiction - you can make the world end. Humour is my multiple warhead delivery system.

  Gary Shteyngart

  World, Fiction, Ends

  Interview with Peter Conrad, www.theguardian.com. September 4, 2010.

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• I write five, six days a week. The thing is capturing the voice. I feel like I've been perfecting one voice - in different iterations, sure, but the Russian-ness has always been the undercurrent.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Writing, Voice, Six

  "'Little Failure' Gary Shteyngart on Immigrant Parents and 'Going Memoir'". Interview with Hannah Levintova, www.motherjones.com. January 3, 2014.

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• I just want fiction to remain a vital force for entertainment and not just for contemplation. Both things can exist.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Entertainment, Fiction, Want

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• I felt the weakness of these books, their immateriality, how they had failed to change the world, and I didn't want to sully myself with their weakness anymore.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Book, Weakness, World

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.265, Granta Books

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• I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Teenage, Love You, Ducks

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• On that night I was left with only the truth that nothing of our personality survives after death, that in the end all that was Misha Vainberg would evaporate along with the styles and delusions of his epoch, leaving behind not one flutter of his sad heavy brilliance, not one damp spot around which his successors could congregate to appreciate his life and times.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Night, Appreciate, Personality

  Gary Shteyngart (2013). “Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story: Two Bestselling Novels”, p.183, Random House

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• The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Lakes, Swans, Tchaikovsky

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Absurdistan”, p.181, Granta Books

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