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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
Brain
Submissive
Turns
Entirely
Makes
Mercy
Hands
Parts
Become
Quiet
Work
Fiction
Good
Turn
Hand

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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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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Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.
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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!
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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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That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention they make you confuse attention for mercy.
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I have a great memory. And actually, I remember Russia in some ways better than I remember Queens.
Gary Shteyngart
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Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.
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.
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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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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.
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I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.
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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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I'm the fortieth ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what!... Isn't this how people used to fall in love?
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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.
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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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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You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
Gary Shteyngart
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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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Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.
Gary Shteyngart
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The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.
Gary Shteyngart