"Don't be pretentious is my first advice to……" — Gary Shteyngart
"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 you have to write for the Academy. Be true to your personality. Don't temper your personality down with words. Don't build defensive fortresses around yourself with words - words are your friends."
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Gary Shteyngart
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65 Quotes by Gary Shteyngart
Gary Shteyngart has 65 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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I'm the fortieth ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what!... Isn't this how people used to fall…
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If you read only one memoir by a disaffected, urban, 20-something Jewish girl this year, make it this one. Shukert…
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Satire always benefits when evil and stupidity collide.
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I love librarians more than any other people in the world. When I was an immigrant kid, they’ve made me…
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She was clothed entirely in two large swatches of leather, the leather fake and shiny in a self-mocking way, absolutely…
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In the first few pages, Kundera discusses several abstract historical figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's sake, I wanted him…
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A writer or any suffering artist-to-be is just an instrument too finely set to the human condition [...]
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My mother cranes her neck. Her ability to be fascinated by things is her best gift to me.
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We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
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In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.
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You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.
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Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.
See all 65 quotes by Gary Shteyngart »
More Academy Quotes
This quote is filed under Academy Quotes,
one of 252 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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There is, however, another purpose to which academies contribute. When they consist of a limited number of persons, eminent for…
— Charles Babbage
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Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and…
— Mikhail Baryshnikov
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We lived, until I was 12 or so, in communal apartment with five different families and the same kitchen, in…
— Mikhail Baryshnikov
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Academe, n.: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. Academy, n.: A modern school where football is taught.
— Ambrose Bierce
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I'm a member of the Academy, but I don't know who all the other Academy members are. It's not like…
— Albert Brooks
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High school was interesting, because I went from a public school middle school to an academy where the first year…
— Kyle Chandler
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Music is my life, professionally, for nearly 60 years. To be recognized by the academy is still the highest honor.
— Ray Charles
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You've probably noticed already that I'm dressed like a grown-up... I apologize to the Academy, and I promise that I…
— Cher
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That best academy, a mother's knee.
— James Russell Lowell
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The manager sits down with me; I sit down with the board. We assess the success of the year. The…
— David Gill
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Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain…
— Baruch Spinoza
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When I am dead, let it be said of me: he belonged to no school, to no church, to no…
— Gustave Courbet
See all 252 Academy Quotes »