Gary Shteyngart

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

— Gary Shteyngart

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

— Gary Shteyngart

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

— Gary Shteyngart

You could drown a kitten in her blue eyes.

— Gary Shteyngart

“{I'm partial to anyone who looks half blind)”

— Gary Shteyngart

“I am not good with others.”

— Gary Shteyngart

“If only beauty could explain the world away.”

— Gary Shteyngart

Asthmatic immigrant learns to breathe by writing.

— Gary Shteyngart

“Every author who straddles culture is inauthentic in a way.”

— Gary Shteyngart

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

“The world is harsh and inconsiderate, and you can rely only on your family.”

— Gary Shteyngart

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

— Gary Shteyngart

If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch.

— Gary Shteyngart

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

— Gary Shteyngart

“How can we read when people need our help? It's a luxury. A stupid luxury.”

— Gary Shteyngart

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

— Gary Shteyngart

Without humor, I cannot go on and I doubt many of my readers would go on either. Humor is so important. I…

— Gary Shteyngart

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

— Gary Shteyngart

“The past is haunting us. In Queens, in Manhattan, it is shadowing us, punching us in the stomach. I am small, and…

— Gary Shteyngart

“This red-fading-into-brown defines Queens for me; it is quiet and melancholy and postsuccessful, vaguely British in its disposition.”

— Gary Shteyngart

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

— Gary Shteyngart

“Cereal is food, sort of. It tastes grainy, easy and light, with a hint of false fruitiness. It tastes the way America…

— Gary Shteyngart

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

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

— Gary Shteyngart

“I write because there is nothing as joyful as writing, even when the writing is twisted and full of hate, the self-hate…

— Gary Shteyngart

“I remember reading the Times in the subway, folding it awkwardly while leaning against the door, caught up in the words, worried…

— Gary Shteyngart

“I wanted to confront her, to make her see the folly of her religion, to change her diet, to help her spend…

— Gary Shteyngart

Life for young American college graduates is a festive affair. Free of having to support their families, they mostly have gay parties…

— Gary Shteyngart

“But what will happen, and I got this from reliable sources, is that the International Monetary Fund will skedaddle from D.C., possibly…

— Gary Shteyngart

“The novel was set in an unspecified near future, because setting a novel in the present in a time of unprecedented technological…

— Gary Shteyngart

“We may not be a great power anymore, we may be into you for sixty-five trillion yuan-pegged, but we're not afraid to…

— Gary Shteyngart

“There's something outrageously simple about extending yourself toward a goal the way a plant seeks the sun's rays or a gopher the…

— Gary Shteyngart

In the first few pages, Kundera discusses several abstract historical figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's sake, I wanted him to get…

— Gary Shteyngart

I wish I were stronger and more secure in myself so that I could really spend my life with a guy like…

— Gary Shteyngart

“These are all good things, I said. But no one knows where your country is or who you are. You don't have…

— Gary Shteyngart

“We know summer is the height of of being alive. We don't believe in God or the prospect of an afterlife mostly,…

— Gary Shteyngart

“Let’s start with my surname: Shteyngart. A German name whose insane Sovietized spelling, eye-watering bunching of consonants (just one i between the…

— Gary Shteyngart

“Alyosha-Bob and I have an interesting hobby that we indulge whenever possible. We think of ourselves as The Gentlemen Who Like To…

— Gary Shteyngart

“My poor Eunice looked so tired when she huffed off the bus with her many bags that I nearly tackled her in…

— Gary Shteyngart

... I'm the fortieth-ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what! What if someday she lets me kiss each one…

— Gary Shteyngart