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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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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Would
Lawyer
Sell
Sells
Tried
Kiev
College
Graduated
Maybe
Chicken
Mother
Chickens
Wanted
Hadn

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I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.
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The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.
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I have a great memory. And actually, I remember Russia in some ways better than I remember Queens.
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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 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.
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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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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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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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Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.
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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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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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American fiction is good. It would be nice if somebody read it.
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