Quotes from Gary Shteyngart

Whatever else could be said of Eunice Park, she was perfectly true.

The half-empty local roads inspired him to "gun" the engine of his sturdy but inflexible Swedish automobile

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.

Why do you know so much old rap? Because I'm white.

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.

Papa, there's an armored jeep guarding the 99¢ store on Old Country Road and you're talking about gomiki?

How hard was it to be happy in this fucking country?

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.

Too far is when you're shot in the back of the head somewhere Upstate and the National Guard burns your body to a crisp and flushes the ashes down a cold winter's port-a-potty at some Secure Screening Facility in Troy. Lenny

And between them I am rosy cheeked, aflame with health and joy. I am still the owner of the same stupid Soviet polka-dot shirt, but most of it is hidden by a new Italian sweater, its shoulders ringed with something like epaulets, so that I may continue the fantasy that I will join the Red Army someday. My hair is as long and unruly as the Italian state, and the gap between my crooked teeth is its own opera, but the rings under my eyes that have made such an underaged raccoon out of me are gone.

Or was this merely a riff on her unfortunate marriage? Her misfortune as part of his seduction?

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?

Mrs. Hayes looked decades behind her God-given years, too. The whole family was investment-grade.

These kids would already be in college by the time Trump left office. If he left office. No matter what they did or whom they became, Donald Trump would dominate at least a part of their lives. He would try to drag them down to his level. That's what he did.

What's up, wifey?" Mina said, grabbing her by the cheeks, then smacking her ass. Seema always felt better about being the child of immigrants when she hung out with Mina, her first-year roommate. The girl had no plans before, during, or after Michigan. She worked in graphic web design, which these days was simply a catchall category for anything not involving finance or escorting. Then again, her parents were so rich she didn't even have to grow up Asian.

You're such a nerd." She laughed cruelly at me. "What?" I said. "I'm sorry." I laughed too, just in case it was a joke, but right away I felt hurt. "LPT," she said. "TIMATOV. ROFLAARP. PRGV. Totally PRGV." The youth and their abbreviations. I pretended like I knew what she was talking about. "Right," I said. "IMF. PLO. ESL." She looked at me like I was insane. "JBF," she said.

Wasn't that the whole point of Facebook, to demonstrate to your classmates that you were more than okay in the world?

Power is not a means, Vinston; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." I

Shiva wouldn't have to accomplish as much as Arturo. He was a rich man's son. He could go to Skidmore or launch a clothing line made out of hemp, but his parents needed a sign that he knew he was a part of their tight, illustrious family.

what used to be the Friendly's restaurant but

It was clear to him, suddenly, that she was educated in an international school, and Luis probably went to a prep school in the States. Old money. Laughing at new money.

Alcohol is the gift of any narration, and any writer thrills to the thwop of a corkscrew being pulled.

THE HAMBURGER scent of Shake Shack had made the southeast corner of Madison Park a Brahman nightmare for Seema.

LOVE TAKES OFF MASKS THAT WE FEAR WE CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT AND KNOW WE CANNOT LIVE WITHIN.—JAMES BALDWIN