Gary Shteyngart Quotes

I had funny memories, too, but the music was more important to me than anything else.

A lot of the reasons why something is a favorite thing are all things you don't necessarily see, the place, the people, the time, where you are, what it meant to you at the time.

To me, they are equally important, as they represent a certain period in my life and times. With that in mind, it really is impossible to pick favorites.

I like to spend time in the past, with the things that have been important to me.

I immerse myself in things that meant something to me while I was growing up.

It was such a whirlwind for us for about three to four years there that, every time we turned around, we were pulled in 90 different directions, and I look back on that now, and they're such wonderful memories, but you kinda wish that you would've taken the time to savor them a little bit more.

It's amazing how the biggest things in our lives - when we're around the fireplace and talking about them when we're older - the things that matter the most to us start off amazingly small and in a humble way.

As I've grown older, I appreciate what I had at Lilly even more than I did back then.

There's an old saying that if you come back to the place where you became a man, you will remember all those things you need to be happy... That saying never made sense to me, but I thought it was worth a try.

In theory momentos serve to bring back the moment. In fact they serve only to make clear how inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here. How inadequately I appreciated the moment when it was here is something else I could never afford to see.

Over the years, one comes to measure a place, too, not just for the beauty it may give, the balminess of its breezes, the insouciance and relaxation it encourages, the sublime pleasures it offers, but for what it teaches. The way in which it alters our perception of the human. It is not so much that you want to return to indifferent or difficult places, but that you want to not forget.

We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory.

God was awfully good to me during the good days. I cherish the old days, but I don't miss them.

When I was in college, my parents' house burned down, and took a lot of the possessions I'd grown up with. That's probably one thing that made me realize material stuff is not really that important.

I think sometimes in life we rush and only later look back and say, 'Wow, that was something pretty cool that I did,' and we realize we should have been more aware while it was happening.

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

I started to write things down, as a very young child, wanting to find a way to remember - to keep close, somehow - moments that made an impression on me.

I'm sure once my career's over, when I look back when I'm older, I can maybe appreciate it a little bit more.

I wouldn't trade the experiences I've had over the past 36 years for anything.

I look back with a mix of emotions: sadness for the people who are gone, nostalgia for times that have passed, but immense gratitude for the wonderful opportunities that came my way.

I'm a sentimental guy.

I do love the past but wouldn't want to live in it.

When she died, Mom left me her letters and journals. Windows into things I would have been too young to understand when she was alive, or too busy, or too much of a know-it-all.

For me, 'Room' is an opportunity to relive an aspect of my childhood that I hadn't put a ton of thought into.

Nostalgic myself, I am a sucker for other men's nostalgia.