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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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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Turns
Entirely
Makes
Mercy
Hands
Parts
Become
Quiet
Work
Fiction
Good
Turn
Hand
Brain
Submissive

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
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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 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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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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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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Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.
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You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
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I was really not a good student, and I felt that shame every day. That's one of the reasons I started smoking pot and drinking daily.
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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 just want fiction to remain a vital force for entertainment and not just for contemplation. Both things can exist.
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Alcohol causes a lot of problems, and then to solve these problems, you drink more.
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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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Life for young American college graduates is a festive affair. Free of having to support their families, they mostly have gay parties on rooftops where they reflect at length upon their quirky electronic childhoods and sometimes kiss each other on the lips and neck.
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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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Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.
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.
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Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.
Gary Shteyngart
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You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.
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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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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