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Little Failure QUOTES

Little Failure QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

2 " My mother is changing history. She is making her balalaika-smashing mother into a heroine. Does she want me to do the same for her? Is that what good children do for their parents? What about good writers? "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

3 " 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. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

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

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

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

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

6 " The truth is this: The rich will rule even at a place like Oberlin, where their kind is technically forbidden. They will simply invert the power structure to suit their needs. They will come out on top no matter what. Stuyvesant was hard but hopeful; Oberlin, on the other hand, reminds me yet again how the world works. I guess that's why they call it an education. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

7 " 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. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

8 " I want to be loved so badly, it verges on mild insanity. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

9 " In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

10 " I am a kind of joke, but the question is: which kind? My job is to keep everyone guessing. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

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

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

12 " 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. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

13 " Maybe this is who I really am.

Not a loner, exactly.

But someone who can be alone. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

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

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

15 " When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished'*--Czeslaw Milosz.

*And, I might add, if the family isn't finished, then the writer is. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

16 " This red-fading-into-brown defines Queens for me; it is quiet and melancholy and postsuccessful, vaguely British in its disposition. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

17 " My mother cranes her neck. Her ability to be fascinated by things is her best gift to me. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

18 " I am born hungry. Ravenous. I want to eat the world, and I can never be satiated. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

19 " I am not good with others. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure

20 " stockbrokers, secretaries, government functionaries—everybody back then was expected to have some kind of inner life. "

― Gary Shteyngart , Little Failure