Gary Shteyngart quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Gary Shteyngart

Every author who straddles culture is inauthentic in a way.

I am a kind of joke, but the question is: which kind? My job is to keep everyone guessing.

Freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.

Satire always benefits when evil and stupidity collide.

I think of my mother and father. Of their constant anxiety. But their anxiety means they still want to live.

Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.

Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.

By reading this message you are denying its existence and implying consent.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: The memoirs I love are all very intense. If you're going to do a memoir and protect yourself, what the hell's the point? Just do fiction.

The memoirs I love are all very intense. If you're going to do a memoir and protect yourself, what the hell's the point? Just do fiction.

But what kind of profession is this, writer?" my mother would ask. "You want to be this?" I want to be this.

I have a great memory. And actually, I remember Russia in some ways better than I remember Queens.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: Good fiction makes me turn off all the other parts of my brain, so that I become quiet and submissive, entirely at the mercy of the work at hand.

Good fiction makes me turn off all the other parts of my brain, so that I become quiet and submissive, entirely at the mercy of the work at hand.

Stockbrokers, secretaries, government functionaries - everybody back then was expected to have some kind of inner life.

I gave him a photocopy of who I was, without telling him that I was unhappy and humiliated and often, just like him, all alone.

He knows that people marked for greater things are often the least happy of all.

Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.

Cereal is food, sort of. It tastes grainy, easy and light, with a hint of false fruitiness. It tastes the way America feels.

The best thing about the iPhone is this that tells me where I am all the time. There's never a need to feel lost anymore.

The world is harsh and inconsiderate, and you can rely only on your family.

Do not believe the Judeo-Christian lie!

If you stop thinking, if you stop wondering, you die.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: We are now part of this giant machine where every second we have to take out a device and contribute our thoughts and opinions.

We are now part of this giant machine where every second we have to take out a device and contribute our thoughts and opinions.

My mother cranes her neck. Her ability to be fascinated by things is her best gift to me.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: I'd love to have a 19th Century Russian book club where all the members had to act like the pretentious minor noblemen they were reading about.

I'd love to have a 19th Century Russian book club where all the members had to act like the pretentious minor noblemen they were reading about.

Maybe this is who I really am.
Not a loner, exactly.
But someone who can be alone.

I am not good with others.

After all, this is America, and you can swap out the parts of yourself that don't work. You can rebuild yourself piece by piece.

How can we read when people need our help? It's a luxury. A stupid luxury.

I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: When civilization takes a nose dive, how can you look away? You've got to be there. You've got to be at the bottom of the swimming pool taking notes.

When civilization takes a nose dive, how can you look away? You've got to be there. You've got to be at the bottom of the swimming pool taking notes.

I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.

This is the superhumanity of the immigrant, but woe be to the all-too-human offspring living in the shadow of such strength.

I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: 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.

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.

As every so-called creative spirit soon learns, the rest of the world doesn't particularly give a damn.

You don't want to end up in Troy," the

I think what will happen is that fiction will become more like poetry. As in, the only people who read it will write it.

I like the map feature on the iPhone that tells me where I am, because I travel a lot.

Whatever else could be said of Eunice Park, she was perfectly true.

If they can make a fabulous gay man work like that, I thought, what can they do to the rest of us?

Today I've made a major decision. I'm never going to die.

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

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

All love is socioeconomic. It's the gradients in status that make arousal possible.

Just don't write like a self -hating Jew, my father is whispering into my ear.

Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.

{I'm partial to anyone who looks half blind)

I wonder what children whose parents have money think about in their spare time.

People always write on my Facebook that they've seen somebody they thought was me on the subway, and I was cursing badly.

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

Remember this ... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.

Before my first novel, I was dating a woman who later went to prison for bashing a guy with a hammer.

The fact that my sexual awakening peripherally involves Steve Guttenberg I have gradually accepted.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: My first book really did change my life. It allowed me to fully express myself. There was a sense that I was worth something as an artist.

My first book really did change my life. It allowed me to fully express myself. There was a sense that I was worth something as an artist.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: In her bones, this may still be her country. But she will not touch it with her hands the way I do, trying to lyricize the filth and the decay.

In her bones, this may still be her country. But she will not touch it with her hands the way I do, trying to lyricize the filth and the decay.

If we can't take care of each other now, when the world is going to shit, how are we ever going to make it?

You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.

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

If only beauty could explain the world away.

It's special because it's not special, and hence it makes Cohen feel special for choosing it.

With a singlemindedness common only to former Soviet interior-ministry troops and first-year law students

American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.

I want to be loved so badly, it verges on mild insanity.

A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [ ... ]

There's nothing wrong with her except she's completely fucked up.

Good fucking Christ. What is this, an iPhone?" He

Gary Shteyngart quotes: America should treasure its rare, true original voices and Mark Leyner is one of them. So treasure him already, you bastards!

America should treasure its rare, true original voices and Mark Leyner is one of them. So treasure him already, you bastards!

Whatever you may think of Judaism, Lyuba, in the end it's just a codified system of anxieties.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: 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.

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.

Any life ending in death is essentially pointless.

I am born hungry. Ravenous. I want to eat the world, and I can never be satiated.

The physical world is the only salvation from a mind constantly churning away at itself.

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

He didn't love her. They were together for the obvious and timeless reason: It was slightly less painful than being alone.

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.

Aberdeen, a city in the northern reaches of HSBC-London. Their

You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: That's what I admire about youngish Italians, the slow dimunition of ambition, the recognition that the best is far behind them.

That's what I admire about youngish Italians, the slow dimunition of ambition, the recognition that the best is far behind them.

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief ( ... ) beautiful.

The true subject of science fiction is death, not life. It will all end. The totality of it.

In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.

This country is so stupid. Only spoiled white people could let something so good get so bad. I

Gary Shteyngart quotes: Without humor, I cannot go on and I doubt many of my readers would go on either. Humor is so important. I am here to have fun here with my

Without humor, I cannot go on and I doubt many of my readers would go on either. Humor is so important. I am here to have fun here with my work.

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

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

We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: Heavy use of a special hypoallergenic organic air freshener is encouraged at Post-Human Services, because the scent of immortality is complex.

Heavy use of a special hypoallergenic organic air freshener is encouraged at Post-Human Services, because the scent of immortality is complex.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: This red-fading-into-brown defines Queens for me; it is quiet and melancholy and postsuccessful, vaguely British in its disposition.

This red-fading-into-brown defines Queens for me; it is quiet and melancholy and postsuccessful, vaguely British in its disposition.

Gary Shteyngart quotes: The simple trill of her laugh has not declined over the years; if anything it's been buffeted by her endless sorrows and disappointments.

The simple trill of her laugh has not declined over the years; if anything it's been buffeted by her endless sorrows and disappointments.

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

Gary Shteyngart quotes: If you read only one memoir by a disaffected, urban, 20-something Jewish girl this year, make it this one. Shukert rocks the lulav.

If you read only one memoir by a disaffected, urban, 20-something Jewish girl this year, make it this one. Shukert rocks the lulav.

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