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
“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
I always think that good writers should be growing up on the brink of death - it really lets them see mortality… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
“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 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
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
One of the goals of analysis is you become your own analyst. You continue the process even if you're not in therapy,… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
I write five, six days a week. The thing is capturing the voice. I feel like I've been perfecting one voice -… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
People always write on my Facebook that they've seen somebody they thought was me on the subway, and I was cursing badly. — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
The only way to write about right now is to write about the future. — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
I write almost entirely in bed or on a couch with my feet up on the coffee table. I feel most creative… — Gary Shteyngart Copy Share Image
A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...] — 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
“There's no present left. This is the problem for a novelist. [The problem] is the present is gone. We're all living in… — 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
