Gary Shteyngart Quotes

Let's see if I can write about something other than my heart.

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

The novel was set in an unspecified near future, because setting a novel in the present in a time of unprecedented technological and social dislocation seemed to me shortsighted.... To write a book set in the present, circa 2013, is to write about the distant past.

I write because there is nothing as joyful as writing, even when the writing is twisted and full of hate, the self-hate that makes writing not only possible but necessary. I hate myself, I hate the people around me, but what I crave is the fulfillment of some ideal.

As every so-called creative spirit soon learns, the rest of the world doesn't particularly give a damn.

Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.

Reading is difficult. People just aren't meant to read anymore. We're in a post-literate age. You know, a visual age. How many years after the fall of Rome did it take for a Dante to appear? Many, many years.

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

She folds the pages of the books she reads when she wants to remember something important. Her favorite books are accordions, testaments to an endless search for meaning.

In contravention of my belief that any life ending in death is essentially pointless, I needed my friends to open up that plastic bag and take one last look at me. Someone had to remember me, if only for a few more minutes in the vast silent waiting room of time.

After all, this is America, and you can swap out the parts of yourself that don't work. You can rebuild yourself piece by piece.

We're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.

I wonder what children whose parents have money think about in their spare time.

Every moment I have ever experienced as a child is as important as every moment I am experiencing now, or will experience ever. I guess what I'm saying is that not everybody should have children.