Gary Shteyngart Quotes

Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.

The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons -- it was systemic and it was complete.

If you stop thinking, if you stop wondering, you die.

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

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.

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.

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.

You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.

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.

If you read only one memoir by a disaffected, urban, 20-something Jewish girl this year, make it this one. Shukert rocks the lulav.

Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.

The only way to write about right now is to write about the future.

My parents were kind enough to spend hours talking to me.

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.

Satire always benefits when evil and stupidity collide.

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

I am born hungry. Ravenous. I want to eat the world, and I can never be satiated.

That's what I always liked about science fiction - you can make the world end. Humour is my multiple warhead delivery system.

The greatest books in Russian literature are satires. Gogol's Dead Souls, for example, is a very over-the-top satire about life in Russia. I think it's the thing we do best.

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.

The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.

I'm the fortieth ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what!... Isn't this how people used to fall in love?

By reading this message you are denying its existence and implying consent.

Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.

My first book really did change my life. It allowed me to fully express myself. There was a sense that I was worth something as an artist.

freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.

I have a great memory. And actually, I remember Russia in some ways better than I remember Queens.

We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.

Italy has sun and tomatoes, and Russia just has real problems.

Vodka has a huge history in Russia, in that it's almost like a currency. It's the one thing that keeps the country in the dark ages and having a rollicking good time.

Getting out of Russia was the best thing my parents did. I mean, that country will never amount to anything.

Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.

In a strange way, I expected Russia to become more like America since the Soviet Union collapsed, but the reverse is true. America has become more like Russia: a kleptocratic society.

Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.

You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes.

In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.

I just want fiction to remain a vital force for entertainment and not just for contemplation. Both things can exist.

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.

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

America should treasure its rare, true original voices and Mark Leyner is one of them. So treasure him already, you bastards!

People always write on my Facebook that they've seen somebody they thought was me on the subway, and I was cursing badly.

I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.

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.

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.

I don't have many possessions, apart from my books.

My mother cranes her neck. Her ability to be fascinated by things is her best gift to me.

A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...]

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.

I feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I'm not in love with him.

I read real books. On paper. You know, those printed books? I feel like this is the last thing I do to support my industry. I think they smell great, too.