Gary Shteyngart Quotes

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 know that we're only given eighty summers or so per lifetime, and each one has to be better then the last, has to encompass a trip to that arts center up at Bard, a seemingly mellow game of badminton over at some yahoo's Vermont cottage, and a cool, wet, slightly dangerous kayak trip down an unforgiving river. Otherwise, how would you know that you have lived your summertime best? What is you missed out on some morsel of shaded nirvana?

Forget the fountain of youth, pal of mine. You can live to be a thousand, and it won't matter. Mediocrities like you deserve immortality.

You are not what you want. You are what wants you back.

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 ethnic cuisine; your diaspora , from what I understand, is mostly in Southern California, three time zones removed from the national media in New York; and you don't have a recognizable, long-simmering conflict like the one between the Israelis and the Palestinians, where people in the richer nations can take sides and argue over at the dinner table. The best you can do is get the United Nations involved, as in East Timor. Maybe they'll send troops.""We don't want the United Nations" Mr. Nanabragov said. "We don't want Sri Lankan troops patrolling our streets. We're better tan that. We want America.

All love is socioeconomic. It’s the gradients in status that make arousal possible.

Maybe this is who I really am.Not a loner, exactly.But someone who can be alone.

Michigan, with its delicious American name. How lucky one must be to live there.

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.