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1 " The bookshelves were lined with Joan Didion and Flannery O'Connor, a small, unexpected collection of musicalia, essay collections on Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. There was a framed poster of an exhibit of romantic landscape paintings in Dresden. Intellectuals had their own thing going, that was for sure. "
― Gary Shteyngart , Lake Success
2 " 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. "
3 " 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. "
4 " Were all men separated from their children and wives by an invisible ribbon of cluelessness? "
5 " Folks had draped strange flags over their iron porticoes with drawings of pineapples and the word WELCOME. The South was like that, festive but impenetrable. "
6 " A man that rich couldn't be stupid. Or, Seema thought now, was that the grand fallacy of twenty-first-century America? "
7 " 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. "
8 " Jeff Park paused, as if to let that figure register, but Barry had heard it all before. Prices went up. Shareholders profited. What part of "capitalism" didn't Jeff Park understand? "
9 " Hush, child. Don't be so hard on yourself. Everyone gets to start over again. This America, hon. One dream dies, you get another. "
10 " 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. "
11 " What she missed most about dating men was that small, disconcerting time frame when you thought that maybe you could change them. "
12 " You go around and you do things and you don't know why you do them," she said. "And that's the story of your gender writ large. "
13 " Your sister’s the doctor,” her father said. His pride in his daughters was almost hilarious to behold, like a summer hose spraying in all directions. Seema knew what he would say next. “One doctor, one lawyer. I’m covered for life. "
14 " We lived in a country that rewarded its worst people. We lived in a society where the villains were favored to win. "
15 " 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. "
16 " Leo was a fifty-something Athenian intellectual who had tried to convince Barry that the Greek gods were better, or at least more curious and interesting, than the main Judeo-Christian one, whom he saw as a collector of sorts, never happy with his last acquisition, always too busy to maintain the pieces he already owned. "
17 " Like a long-haul jet, their building was divided into economy, business, and first. "
18 " Only rarely had Barry seen women combine humor with success. "
19 " tikkun olam, or “repairing the world. "
20 " The best fiction is the fiction of self-delusion. It contrasts the banality of our self-made fictions against the hopelessness of the world as it really is. The worst thing that we can tell you at a place like Princeton is that you can have it all.” He scanned the small group around him and brushed the leathery buttons holding his vest tightly over his large body. “Well,” he said. “You can’t. "
