175 Quotes by Gary Shteyngart

We are a nation of shareholders," he had said more than once to Seema, trying to articulate his brand of no-nonsense but compassionate capitalism.... Several times during his Greyhound trip, Barry had paused to consider that, although he loved his fellow passengers deeply, he could not trust them at the voting booth because they were not shareholders. They did not understand the thrill and the pain and the obligation of owning a part of their country.

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.

Now he understood why he hated Luis Goodman and other writers so much. He was a damaged person, but not damaged enough to make a life out of it.

After he had taught himself to be friendly, everything else became harder. He had to let go of his nerdy passions. He couldn't do both at once.

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

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. “You’re my sacred ones,” I told the books. “No one but me still cares about you. But I’m going to keep you with me forever. And one day I’ll make you important again.” I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.

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.

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