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If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.

Gary Shteyngart

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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Still
Really
Effective
Russia
Lived
Dead
Stills

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.
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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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Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.
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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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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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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.
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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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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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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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My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
Gary Shteyngart
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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
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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.
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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It is a capital insult in this country not to make love to a naked woman, even if she is related to you.
Gary Shteyngart
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I love Paul Giamatti - God, that man is like a walking Chekhov. His connection to humanity is unbelievable, and those feelings of low self-esteem - the way that all comes together on the screen? Delicious.
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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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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Alcohol causes a lot of problems, and then to solve these problems, you drink more.
Gary Shteyngart
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You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
Gary Shteyngart
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Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.
Gary Shteyngart