Latest Gary Shteyngart Quotes from Interviews

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• Usually, with a novel, you start with no idea what to do because your job is to create convincing characters and then they just run around getting crazy. The problem with writing a memoir, obviously, is you can't do that because you sort of know what's going to happen. Because you're the character.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Running, Crazy, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Fun, Book, Reading

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• 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.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Book, Thinking, Soul

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I love to act, I've always wanted to be an actor. I think that acting and fiction go nicely together - being able to visualize language as something you perform, not just something that's there on the page.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Thinking, Acting, Together

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• One of the goals of analysis is you become your own analyst. You continue the process even if you're not in therapy, whether you continue the process by walking down the street thinking about things or whether you continue the process, as I do, by writing about them.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Writing, Thinking, Goal

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• After you publish a book, you become a writer and you're supposed to take it very seriously. You're supposed to show up at your desk - although frankly, I don't have a desk, I write in bed - you're supposed to show up at your bed and produce work. I think it's a little bit like work. I like to have fun with it, do things like make silly book trailers. I don't want to take this too seriously.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Fun, Silly, Book

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I write five, six days a week. The thing is capturing the voice. I feel like I've been perfecting one voice - in different iterations, sure, but the Russian-ness has always been the undercurrent.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Writing, Voice, Six

  "'Little Failure' Gary Shteyngart on Immigrant Parents and 'Going Memoir'". Interview with Hannah Levintova, www.motherjones.com. January 3, 2014.

• 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!

  Gary Shteyngart

  Book, Men, Needs

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• 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

  Jobs, Ideas, Parent

• Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Writing, Breathe, Immigrants

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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

  Gary Shteyngart

  Writing, People, Subway

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Before my first novel, I was dating a woman who later went to prison for bashing a guy with a hammer.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Dating, Guy, Firsts

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• 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.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Book, Artist, Firsts

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• 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.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Drinking, Smoking, Students

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• 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

  Mother, College, Kiev

  Source: www.motherjones.com

• Alcohol causes a lot of problems, and then to solve these problems, you drink more.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Alcohol, Causes, Problem

  "Gary Shteyngart's Rules for Vodka Drinking" by Ben Detrick, www.esquire.com. August 9, 2010.

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

  Gary Shteyngart

  Country, Mean, Russia

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• 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.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Country, Dark, Russia

  "Gary Shteyngart's Rules for Vodka Drinking" by Ben Detrick, www.esquire.com. August 9, 2010.

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

  Gary Shteyngart

  Real, Russia, Tomatoes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• You can't have a Russian household without vodka. It's just something to wash everything down with. I can't remember a time when I didn't drink vodka, either in Russia or here. I don't think there's ever a wrong time to start drinking it. My ancestors drank it, and if I ever have any children, they'll be drinking it.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Children, Drinking, Thinking

  "Gary Shteyngart's Rules for Vodka Drinking" by Ben Detrick, www.esquire.com. August 9, 2010.

• 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

  Hurt, Kids, Hands

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Vodka is a wonderful drink. You can drink so much of it without being as hung over as you would if you were drinking one of the brown liquors - the whiskeys and such. It's a great drink to go with appetizers.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Drinking, Whiskey, Wonderful

  "Gary Shteyngart's Rules for Vodka Drinking" by Ben Detrick, www.esquire.com. August 9, 2010.

• 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

  Beer, Russia, Cities

  Source: www.esquire.com

• 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.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Memories, School, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The memoirs I love are all very intense. If you're going to do a memoir and protect yourself, what the hell's the point? Just do fiction.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Fiction, Hell, Intense

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com