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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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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Way
Large
Clothed
Year
Shiny
Two
Leather
Become
Mainstream
Firsts
Correct
Self
Fake
First
Entirely
Years
Absolutely
Mocking
More quotes by Gary Shteyngart
We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
Gary Shteyngart
American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
Gary Shteyngart
I have a great memory. And actually, I remember Russia in some ways better than I remember Queens.
Gary Shteyngart
That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention they make you confuse attention for mercy.
Gary Shteyngart
In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.
Gary Shteyngart
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
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
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
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
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.
Gary Shteyngart
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
Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.
Gary Shteyngart
Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.
Gary Shteyngart
Vodka is a wonderful drink. You can drink so much of it without being as hung over as you would if you were drinking one of the brown liquors - the whiskeys and such. It's a great drink to go with appetizers.
Gary Shteyngart
If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.
Gary Shteyngart
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
I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.
Gary Shteyngart
Before my first novel, I was dating a woman who later went to prison for bashing a guy with a hammer.
Gary Shteyngart
Alcohol causes a lot of problems, and then to solve these problems, you drink more.
Gary Shteyngart
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
