... I'm the fortieth-ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what! What if someday she lets me kiss each one of her freckles again? She has like a million. But every one of them means something to me. Isn't this how people used to fall in love? I know we're living in Rubenstein's America, like you keep saying. But doesn't that just make us even more responsible for each other's fates? I mean, what if Eunice and I just said no to all this. To this bar. To this FACing. The two of us. What if we just went home and read books to each other?
Gary ShteyngartWe're people of the Orient. We know everything. And what we don't know, we can sense.
Gary ShteyngartYou want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.
Gary ShteyngartGood fiction makes me turn off all the other parts of my brain, so that I become quiet and submissive, entirely at the mercy of the work at hand.
Gary Shteyngart