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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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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Attention
Make
Covet
Confuse
Tyrants
Mercy
Guess

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The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.
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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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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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Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.
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My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
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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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I'm the fortieth ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what!... Isn't this how people used to fall in love?
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I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.
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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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If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.
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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!
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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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Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.
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Before my first novel, I was dating a woman who later went to prison for bashing a guy with a hammer.
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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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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.
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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.
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American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
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I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.
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You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
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