In a strange way, I expected Russia to become more like America since the Soviet Union collapsed, but the reverse is true.… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great. — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
I was very, very sick when I was growing up in Russia. The ambulance constantly came to our house. I had horrible… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“After all, this is America, and you can swap out the parts of yourself that don't work. You can rebuild yourself piece… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
America should treasure its rare, true original voices and Mark Leyner is one of them. So treasure him already, you bastards! — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“And the looks on the faces of my countrymenpassive heads bent arms at their trousers everyone guilty of not being their best… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
... 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 Copy Share Image
I have a love/hate relationship with just about everything, but certainly with America. — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
In America, everyone writes but no one reads. Everyone's writing all day long - sending emails, tweets, text messages; they all think… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
If I still lived in Russia, I'd be dead... or a really effective oligarch. — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“The fact that my sexual awakening peripherally involves Steve Guttenberg I have gradually accepted.” — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
