Gary Shteyngart Quotes

Everything was good. But it was awful, too.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

If ice can burn, then love and hate can mate.

Politics is a love-hate relationship. I sure know that.

I like to not care that much about criticism, but I do care about it.

I would say that I have a love-hate relationship with almost everything in my life, including stand-up.

As much as I love boxing, I hate it. And as much as I hate it, I love it.

A lot of what I was wanting to do in my work and what I have been doing has been about the unexpected... that unexpected situation of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time.

All of these mechanisms we have for celebrating are so double-edged. So much sorrow comes out of joy.

I have fervently been on both sides of that question at different times.

The best ideas make you want to say 'yes' and 'no' in the same breath.

Well, it's looks like I've a love-hate thing going on with Monaco.

You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?

The body is our enemy, and yet is our friend.

Strange, I thought, how you can be living your dreams and your nightmares at the very same time.

It would take too long to explain the intimate alliance of contradictions in human nature which makes love itself wear at times the desperate shape of betrayal. And perhaps there is no possible explanation.

Love. It's so close to hate, it's almost indistinguishable.

The chemistry of dissatisfaction is as the chemistry of some marvelously potent tar. In it are the building stones of explosives, stimulants, poisons, opiates, perfumes and stenches.

I hate, and yet must love the thing I hate.

I loved feeling special. I hated feeling special.

Human beings can be awful, but they can also be tremendous.

Mexico. Melancholy, profoundly right and wrong, it embraces as it strangulates.

From the first time he'd met her, he'd sensed an air of contradiction about her. She was very much a woman, but still retained a waiflike quality. She could be brash, and at times deliberately suggestive, yet she was painfully shy. She was incredibly easy to get along with, yet she had few friends. She was a talented artist in her own right, but so self-conscious about her work that she rarely completed a piece and preferred to work with other people's art and ideas.

There was much to hate in this world and too much to love.

If we hadn't hated him a lot, we might have liked him a little at that moment. But we did. So we didn't.