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Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality.

Gary Shteyngart

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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Matter
Immortality
Like
Mines
Mine
Deserve
Youth
Mediocrities
Thousand
Pals
Forget
Fountain
Live
Mediocrity

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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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
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My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
Gary Shteyngart
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I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.
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One should learn from a book. Books have a lot to teach us. They have a lot of empathy to impart to us, but they should also be fun. This stuff is fun! You shouldn't pick up a book and say, Oh my god, I'm gonna better myself by reading this. You may better yourself by reading this, but who cares? Just have fun.
Gary Shteyngart
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A lot of the ways of advertising a book - the cover, whether somebody sees it on a subway or sees it in a bookstore - those things are going to rapidly diminish as we move to an electronic model.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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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
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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
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The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.
Gary Shteyngart
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American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
Gary Shteyngart
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Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.
Gary Shteyngart
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The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.
Gary Shteyngart
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Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.
Gary Shteyngart
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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
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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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!
Gary Shteyngart
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We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart