Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Kind
Russia
Beers
Would
Major
Vodka
People
Ten
Introduce
Shots
Introducing
Tried
Perfectly
Okay
Beer
Cities
Younger
Working
Majors
Liquidated

More quotes by 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
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.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
If you read only one memoir by a disaffected, urban, 20-something Jewish girl this year, make it this one. Shukert rocks the lulav.
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
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
Getting out of Russia was the best thing my parents did. I mean, that country will never amount to anything.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
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.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
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
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
In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.
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
I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.
Gary Shteyngart
Image
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
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 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
Image
You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes.
Gary Shteyngart