175 Quotes by Gary Shteyngart

If my mother hadn’t tried to sell me chicken Kiev cutlets for $1.40 after I graduated from college, maybe I would’ve been the lawyer she wanted me to be.

Being a full prof at the University of Texas at El Paso meant living like a managing director at Barclays. Barry had always wondered why people who were just upper-middle class in New York chose to stay there, given that they could live like minor dictators in the rest of the country. “You’re negative arbing yourself,” he used to say.

I felt the weakness of these books, their immateriality, how they had failed to change the world, and I didn’t want to sully myself with their weakness anymore.

Soon you will be home and in my arms and the world will reconfigure itself around you and there will be enough compassion for you to feel scared by how much I care for you.

That’s what I always liked about science fiction – you can make the world end. Humour is my multiple warhead delivery system.

Communications devices were always used to effect change, to effect revolution. Telephone, telegraph – these all seemed like very big enhancements at the time.

He didn’t love her. They were together for the obvious and timeless reason: It was slightly less painful than being alone.

I was a jackass in many ways. I projected that cruelty towards others, that kid whose hand I was wringing. If I could have hurt a hundred weaklings – weaker than me, and I was already very weak – I would. I was dying to hurt somebody, to pay it forward.

That’s what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.