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freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.

Gary Shteyngart

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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Dreams
Freedom
Dream
Anathema
Captivity
Nurtured

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
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Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again.
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The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.
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If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.
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One of the goals of analysis is you become your own analyst. You continue the process even if you're not in therapy, whether you continue the process by walking down the street thinking about things or whether you continue the process, as I do, by writing about them.
Gary Shteyngart
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The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.
Gary Shteyngart
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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
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One should learn from a book. Books have a lot to teach us. They have a lot of empathy to impart to us, but they should also be fun. This stuff is fun! You shouldn't pick up a book and say, Oh my god, I'm gonna better myself by reading this. You may better yourself by reading this, but who cares? Just have fun.
Gary Shteyngart
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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
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In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.
Gary Shteyngart
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American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
Gary Shteyngart
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We are now part of this giant machine where every second we have to take out a device and contribute our thoughts and opinions.
Gary Shteyngart
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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
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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
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Don't be pretentious is my first advice to young writers. This is the big problem - just because you're getting an MFA doesn't mean you have to write for the Academy. Be true to your personality. Don't temper your personality down with words. Don't build defensive fortresses around yourself with words - words are your friends.
Gary Shteyngart
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My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
Gary Shteyngart
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She took my hand and pulled me after her, her shoulders giving off a sweet peppermint concoction that the bodies of young women sometimes produce to make my life more difficult.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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All of my books have an element of a man who is in love with somebody and needs them desperately, not just for procreation but for being able to fully unbosom himself. He only feels comfortable discussing things with women. Which is funny, because 80 percent of readers are women!
Gary Shteyngart