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I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality very clearly.

Gary Shteyngart

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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Growing
Death
Really
Good
Brink
Always
Mortality
Think
Lets
Thinking
Clearly
Writers

More quotes by 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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People always write on my Facebook that they've seen somebody they thought was me on the subway, and I was cursing badly.
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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.
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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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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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We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
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.
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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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Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.
Gary Shteyngart
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Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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A lot of the ways of advertising a book - the cover, whether somebody sees it on a subway or sees it in a bookstore - those things are going to rapidly diminish as we move to an electronic model.
Gary Shteyngart
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Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.
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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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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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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You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
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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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