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Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.

Gary Shteyngart

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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Sun
Problems
Problem
Real
Tomatoes
Italy
Russia

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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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If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.
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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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In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.
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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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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.
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The best thing about the iPhone is this that tells me where I am all the time. Theres never a need to feel lost anymore.
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Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.
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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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Getting out of Russia was the best thing my parents did. I mean, that country will never amount to anything.
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freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.
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American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
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You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes.
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Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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