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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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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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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.
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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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freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.
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I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.
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Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.
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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 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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In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.
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Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.
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The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.
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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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The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.
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Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.
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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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Alcohol causes a lot of problems, and then to solve these problems, you drink more.
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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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Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.
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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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My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.
Gary Shteyngart