Quote

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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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Body
Sweet
Sometimes
Took
Giving
Produce
Make
Hand
Concoction
Life
Difficult
Peppermint
Hands
Pulled
Young
Shoulders
Women
Bodies

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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.
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A lot of the ways of advertising a book - the cover, whether somebody sees it on a subway or sees it in a bookstore - those things are going to rapidly diminish as we move to an electronic model.
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Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.
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freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.
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Getting out of Russia was the best thing my parents did. I mean, that country will never amount to anything.
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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.
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The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.
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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.
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She was clothed entirely in two large swatches of leather, the leather fake and shiny in a self-mocking way, absolutely correct for 1993, the first year when mocking the mainstream had become the mainstream.
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My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
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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.
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I love librarians more than any other people in the world. When I was an immigrant kid, they’ve made me feel like a human being and they gave me books that taught me English.
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You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.
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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.
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You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes.
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I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.
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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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We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
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I have a great memory. And actually, I remember Russia in some ways better than I remember Queens.
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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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