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Getting out of Russia was the best thing my parents did. I mean, that country will never amount to anything.

Gary Shteyngart

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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Country
Mean
Russia
Thing
Parents
Never
Amount
Parent
Getting
Anything
Best

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
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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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The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.
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If you read only one memoir by a disaffected, urban, 20-something Jewish girl this year, make it this one. Shukert rocks the lulav.
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Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.
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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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The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.
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You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
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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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American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
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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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If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.
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I'm the fortieth ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what!... Isn't this how people used to fall in love?
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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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I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.
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That's what I always liked about science fiction - you can make the world end. Humour is my multiple warhead delivery system.
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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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We are now part of this giant machine where every second we have to take out a device and contribute our thoughts and opinions.
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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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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.
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