Gary Shteyngart Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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

  Growing Up, Thinking, Mortality

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

  Gary Shteyngart

  Voice, America, Treasure

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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

  Mean, Writing, Personality

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• Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Writing, Breathe, Immigrants

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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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

  Waiting Rooms, Lasts, Bags

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.69, Granta Books

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• Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.” I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Wall, Book, Smell

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.45, Granta Books

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• 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.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Moon, Orange, Sullen

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel”, p.158, Random House

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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

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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

  Falling In Love, Men, People

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel”, p.116, Random House

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• Summer is a Latvian chicken. We make foolish choices. We think we’re young again. We run with outstretched arms toward an object of love and it pecks us and pecks us until we’re standing there snot-nosed and teary in the middle of Astor Place and the sun sets fire to our Penguin shirts and all that is left to do is go to our air-conditioned homes and ponder the cruelty of our finest season.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Summer, Running, Home

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

  Gary Shteyngart

  Reading, Messages, Existence

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.204, Granta Books

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• 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

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• Reading is difficult. People just aren't meant to read anymore. We're in a post-literate age. You know, a visual age. How many years after the fall of Rome did it take for a Dante to appear? Many, many years.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Fall, Reading, Rome

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel”, p.341, Random House

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• ... I'm the fortieth-ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what! What if someday she lets me kiss each one of her freckles again? She has like a million. But every one of them means something to me. Isn't this how people used to fall in love? I know we're living in Rubenstein's America, like you keep saying. But doesn't that just make us even more responsible for each other's fates? I mean, what if Eunice and I just said no to all this. To this bar. To this FACing. The two of us. What if we just went home and read books to each other?

  Gary Shteyngart

  Falling In Love, Book, Home

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• We know summer is the height of of being alive. We don't believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly, so we know that we're only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better then the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo's Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived your summertime best? What is you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana?

  Gary Shteyngart

  Summer, Art, Believe

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• 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

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

  Gary Shteyngart

  Names, Lucky, Michigan

  Gary Shteyngart (2014). “Little Failure: A Memoir”, p.108, Random House

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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

  Distance, America, Rooms

  Gary Shteyngart (2014). “Little Failure: A Memoir”, p.108, Random House

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• freedom is anathema to dreams nurtured in captivity.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Dream, Captivity, Anathema

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Absurdistan”, p.277, Granta Books

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• 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

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

  Gary Shteyngart

  Wish, Dying, Empires

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.116, Granta Books

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• Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Cities, Despair, Answers

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story”, p.82, Granta Books

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

  Gary Shteyngart

  People, Knows

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Absurdistan”, p.144, Granta Books

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• My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings, all these data, if that helps to clinch the enormity of what I'm talking about, would be gone. And that's what immortality means. It means selfishness. My generations belief that each one of us matters more than you or anyone else would think.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Fall, Mean, Thinking

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel”, p.88, Random House

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• I wish I were stronger and more secure in myself so that I could really spend my life with a guy like Lenny. Because he has a different kind of strength than Joshie. He has the strength of his sweet tuna arms. He has the strength of putting his nose in my hair and calling it home. He has the strength to cry when I go down on him. Who IS Lenny? Who DOES that? Who will ever open up to me like that again? No one. Because it's too dangerous. Lenny is a dangerous man. Joshie is more powerful, but Lenny is much more dangerous.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Sweet, Powerful, Home

  "Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel". Book by Gary Shteyngart, July 27, 2010.

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