Before my first novel, I was dating a woman who later went to prison for bashing a guy with a hammer. — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
Without humor, I cannot go on and I doubt many of my readers would go on either. Humor is so important. I… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
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.… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
I love librarians more than any other people in the world. When I was an immigrant kid, they’ve made me feel like… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“How desperately I wanted to forsake these facts, to open a smelly old book or to go down on a pretty young… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
A lot of the ways of advertising a book - the cover, whether somebody sees it on a subway or sees it… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
My first book really did change my life. It allowed me to fully express myself. There was a sense that I was… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
I felt the weakness of these books, their immateriality, how they had failed to change the world, and I didn't want to… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“The novel was set in an unspecified near future, because setting a novel in the present in a time of unprecedented technological… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
Usually, with a novel, you start with no idea what to do because your job is to create convincing characters and then… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
One should learn from a book. Books have a lot to teach us. They have a lot of empathy to impart to… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“Also, I've spent an entire week without reading any books or talking about them too loudly. I'm learning to work my apparat's… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
All of my books have an element of a man who is in love with somebody and needs them desperately, not just… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
After you publish a book, you become a writer and you're supposed to take it very seriously. You're supposed to show up… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
I read real books. On paper. You know, those printed books? I feel like this is the last thing I do to… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“She folds the pages of the books she reads when she wants to remember something important. Her favorite books are accordions, testaments… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
I'd love to have a 19th Century Russian book club where all the members had to act like the pretentious minor noblemen… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“These are all good things, I said. But no one knows where your country is or who you are. You don't have a familiar… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
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… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
I read real books. On paper. You know, those printed books? I feel like this is the last thing I do to support my… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
Russia tried to introduce beer as kind of the new vodka - and it's working with younger people in major cities - but you… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
“There's something outrageously simple about extending yourself toward a goal the way a plant seeks the sun's rays or a gopher the crunch of… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
Silence has been destroyed, but also the idea that it's important to learn how another person thinks, to enter the mind of another person.… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
“This red-fading-into-brown defines Queens for me; it is quiet and melancholy and postsuccessful, vaguely British in its disposition.” — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch. — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
“The fact that my sexual awakening peripherally involves Steve Guttenberg I have gradually accepted.” — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
“The simple trill of her laugh has not declined over the years; if anything it's been buffeted by her endless sorrows and disappointments.” — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
“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… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
“The novel was set in an unspecified near future, because setting a novel in the present in a time of unprecedented technological and social… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
One should learn from a book. Books have a lot to teach us. They have a lot of empathy to impart to us, but… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share
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 Copy Share
