I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.
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 ShteyngartI'm the fortieth ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what!... Isn't this how people used to fall in love?
Gary ShteyngartAlso, I've spent an entire week without reading any books or talking about them too loudly. I'm learning to work my apparat's screen, the colourful pulsating mosaic of it, the fact that it knows every last stinking detail about the world, whereas my books only know the minds of their authors.
Gary Shteyngart