Summer is a Latvian chicken. We make foolish choices. We think weโre young again. We run with outstretched arms toward an object of love and it pecks us and pecks us until weโre standing there snot-nosed and teary in the middle of Astor Place and the sun sets fire to our Penguin shirts and all that is left to do is go to our air-conditioned homes and ponder the cruelty of our finest season.
Gary ShteyngartI feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I'm not in love with him.
Gary ShteyngartMy parents were constantly afraid they would lose their jobs. The idea that we were always a paycheck away from disaster was drilled into me.
Gary ShteyngartThe radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.
Gary ShteyngartMy hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings, all these data, if that helps to clinch the enormity of what I'm talking about, would be gone. And that's what immortality means. It means selfishness. My generations belief that each one of us matters more than you or anyone else would think.
Gary Shteyngart