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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.

Gary Shteyngart

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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Feel
York
Couch
Feels
Views
Couches
Writing
Feet
Table
Almost
Entirely
Creative
Tables
Nice
Coffee
Looking
Bed
Skyline
Write
Window
Skylines

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If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.
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The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.
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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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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 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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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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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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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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We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
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Vodka is a wonderful drink. You can drink so much of it without being as hung over as you would if you were drinking one of the brown liquors - the whiskeys and such. It's a great drink to go with appetizers.
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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.
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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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The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.
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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.
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Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.
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I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.
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American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
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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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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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Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.
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