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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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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Felt
Didn
Change
Sully
Book
Failed
World
Anymore
Weakness
Books

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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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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Alcohol causes a lot of problems, and then to solve these problems, you drink more.
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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.
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That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention they make you confuse attention for mercy.
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Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.
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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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I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.
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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.
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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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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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Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.
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American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
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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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I have some memories of certain things that happened in high school when I was stoned out of my mind, but I talked with other people about them, and I trusted the aggregated memories.
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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.
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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.
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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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Russia tried to introduce beer as kind of the new vodka - and it's working with younger people in major cities - but you can have ten shots of vodka and be perfectly okay. If I had ten beers, I would be liquidated.
Gary Shteyngart
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You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
Gary Shteyngart