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Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart Quotes

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Famous Gary Shteyngart Quotes

“I am scared of the photo studio. I am scared of the telephone. Scared of anything outside our apartment. Scared of the people in their big fur hats. Scared of the snow. Scared of the cold. Scared of the heat. Scared of the ceiling fan at which I would point one tragic finger and start weeping. Scared of any height higher than my sickbed. Scared of Uncle Electric Current. "Why was I so scared of everything?" I ask my mother nearly forty years later. "Because you were born a Jewish person," she says.”

FearJudaismJewsScariness
Book:Little Failure: A Memoir
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“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.”

WritingFirstsMeanProblemBigsYoungAdvicePersonalityBeing TrueTemperAcademyPretentiousBig ProblemsFortressesYoung Writers
Author:Gary Shteyngart
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“On that night I was left with only the truth that nothing of our personality survives after death, that in the end all that was Misha Vainberg would evaporate along with the styles and delusions of his epoch, leaving behind not one flutter of his sad heavy brilliance, not one damp spot around which his successors could congregate to appreciate his life and times.”

EndsNightLeftBehindsStylePersonalityAppreciateLeavingHeavySpotsDelusionBrillianceAfter DeathEpochSuccessorsDampLife And Time
Book:Absurdistan and Super Sad True Love Story: Two Bestselling Novels
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“I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.”

FeelsFirstsBodyLastsHouseForceBlackRoomsHalfFeetDyingLove YouYouthReadyTasteFilledYour BodyTraditionalSmokeOddFiftySquaresDucksAwkwardBedroomTeenageNaiveHoodUpstairsCapesChimneysSmallnessSquatFirsts And LastsCape CodRipeness
Author:Gary Shteyngart
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