Quote

I have a great memory. And actually, I remember Russia in some ways better than I remember Queens.

Gary Shteyngart

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Memory
Memories
Ways
Actually
Remember
Better
Great
Queens
Way
Russia

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

Image
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
Image
We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
Alcohol causes a lot of problems, and then to solve these problems, you drink more.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
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
Image
I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm the fortieth ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what!... Isn't this how people used to fall in love?
Gary Shteyngart
Image
My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
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
Image
You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
I just want fiction to remain a vital force for entertainment and not just for contemplation. Both things can exist.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
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
Image
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
Image
That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention they make you confuse attention for mercy.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
I was really not a good student, and I felt that shame every day. That's one of the reasons I started smoking pot and drinking daily.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
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.
Gary Shteyngart