Don't be pretentious is my first advice to young writers. This is the big problem - just because you're getting an MFA… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
She was clothed entirely in two large swatches of leather, the leather fake and shiny in a self-mocking way, absolutely correct for… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
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
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 reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
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 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
