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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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Gary Shteyngart
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: July 5
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
St. Petersburg
Novel
Went
Guy
Bashing
Woman
Hammer
Firsts
Hammers
First
Dating
Prison
Later

More quotes by Gary Shteyngart

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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?
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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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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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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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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I write almost entirely in bed or on a couch with my feet up on the coffee table. I feel most creative when Im looking out the window, and my bed and couch have nice views of the New York skyline.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
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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Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.
Gary Shteyngart
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The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.
Gary Shteyngart
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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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Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.
Gary Shteyngart
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By reading this message you are denying its existence and implying consent.
Gary Shteyngart
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In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.
Gary Shteyngart
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I just want fiction to remain a vital force for entertainment and not just for contemplation. Both things can exist.
Gary Shteyngart
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I was a jackass in many ways. I projected that cruelty towards others, that kid whose hand I was wringing. If I could have hurt a hundred weaklings - weaker than me, and I was already very weak - I would. I was dying to hurt somebody, to pay it forward.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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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.
Gary Shteyngart
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The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.
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.
Gary Shteyngart