Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.

I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.

Reading is socially accepted disassociation. You flip a switch and you’re not there anymore. It’s better than heroin. More effective and cheaper and legal.

I've never contended that I had a really horrible life.

I don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny.

Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver.

Gary Shteyngart has written a memoir for the ages. I spat laughter on the first page and closed the last with wet eyes. Un-put-down-able in the day and a half I spent reading it, Little Failure is a window into immigrant agony and ambition, Jewish angst, and anybody's desperate need for a tribe. Readers who've fallen for Shteyngart's antics on the page will relish the trademark humor. But here it's laden and leavened with a deep, consequential, psychological journey. Brave and unflinching, Little Failure is his best book to date