“I think of my mother and father. Of their constant anxiety. But their anxiety means they still want to live.” — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
Getting out of Russia was the best thing my parents did. I mean, that country will never amount to anything. — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
My mother cranes her neck. Her ability to be fascinated by things is her best gift to me. — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“I wonder what children whose parents have money think about in their spare time.” — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“Just don’t write like a self -hating Jew,” my father is whispering into my ear.” — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“The past is haunting us. In Queens, in Manhattan, it is shadowing us, punching us in the stomach. I am small, and… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“I told her my father was a retired janitor who liked to go fishing. She told me her father was a podiatrist… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
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… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“After thirty-nine years of being alive, I had forgiven my own parents for not knowing how to care for a child, but… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
My parents were constantly afraid they would lose their jobs. The idea that we were always a paycheck away from disaster was… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“a dessert made out of a dozen matzohs, a gallon of cream and amaretto liqueur, and a tub of raspberries. What I… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“But I knew it wasn't just the cute girl on the screen that had made Eunice cry. It was her father laughing,… — 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
