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

Gary Shteyngart

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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Dying
Wish
Contend
Empire
Empires

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.
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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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
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I was a jackass in many ways. I projected that cruelty towards others, that kid whose hand I was wringing. If I could have hurt a hundred weaklings - weaker than me, and I was already very weak - I would. I was dying to hurt somebody, to pay it forward.
Gary Shteyngart
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My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
Gary Shteyngart
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In contravention of my belief that any life ending in death is essentially pointless, I needed my friends to open up that plastic bag and take one last look at me. Someone had to remember me, if only for a few more minutes in the vast silent waiting room of time.
Gary Shteyngart
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If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.
Gary Shteyngart
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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
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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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You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
Gary Shteyngart
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Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.
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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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
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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
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People always write on my Facebook that they've seen somebody they thought was me on the subway, and I was cursing badly.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.
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