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I just want fiction to remain a vital force for entertainment and not just for contemplation. Both things can exist.

Gary Shteyngart

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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Vital
Entertainment
Remain
Exist
Fiction
Force
Things
Contemplation

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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Alcohol causes a lot of problems, and then to solve these problems, you drink more.
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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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
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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
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By reading this message you are denying its existence and implying consent.
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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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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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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We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
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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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.
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
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freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart