When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent and true-to-life smells. My mind returned away from what Joshie was saying and I pondered my father's humiliation. The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshipping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned.

Gary Shteyngart

Aller à la citation

---

I wish I were stronger and more secure in myself so that I could really spend my life with a guy like Lenny. Because he has a different kind of strength than Joshie. He has the strength of his sweet tuna arms. He has the strength of putting his nose in my hair and calling it home. He has the strength to cry when I go down on him. Who IS Lenny? Who DOES that? Who will ever open up to me like that again? No one. Because it's too dangerous. Lenny is a dangerous man. Joshie is more powerful, but Lenny is much more dangerous.

Gary Shteyngart

Aller à la citation

---

Remember this... develop a sense of nostalgia for something, or you'll never figure out what's important.

Gary Shteyngart

Aller à la citation

---

Reading is entering into the consciousness of another human being.

Gary Shteyngart

Mots clés reading books

Aller à la citation

---

Here was the tiredness of failure imposed on a country that believed only in its opposite. Here was the end product of our deep moral exhaustion.

Gary Shteyngart

Aller à la citation

---

That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.

Gary Shteyngart

Aller à la citation

---

I felt the weakness of these books, their immateriality, how they had failed to change the world, and I didn't want to sully myself with their weakness anymore.

Gary Shteyngart

Aller à la citation

---

The fading light is us, and we are, for a moment so brief (...) beautiful.

Gary Shteyngart

Mots clés inspirational-attitude

Aller à la citation

---

From the moment I bought my ticket, I had a premonition I wasn’t returning to New York anytime soon.

You Know, this happens a lot to Russians. The Soviet Union is gone, and the borders are as free and passable as they’ve ever been. And yet, when a Russian moves between the two universes, this feeling of finality persists, the logical impossibility of a place like Russia existing alongside the civilized world, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sharing the same atmosphere with, say, Vladivostok. It was like those mathematical concepts I could never understand in high school: if, then. If Russia exists, then the West is a mirage; conversely, if Russia does not exist, then and only then is the West real and tangible. No wonder young people talk about “going beyond the cordon” when they talk of emigrating, as if Russia were ringed by a vast cordon sanitaire. Either you stay in the leper colony or you get out into the wider world and maybe try to spread your disease to others.

Gary Shteyngart

Mots clés russia soviet-union

Aller à la citation

---

If we can't take care of each other now, when the world is going to shit, how are we ever going to make it?

Gary Shteyngart

Aller à la citation

---

« ; premier précédent
Page 3 de 8.
suivant dernier » ;

---

---