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Summer Is A Latvian Chicken. We Make Foolish Choices. We Think We’re Young Again. We Run With Outstretched Arms Toward An Object Of Love And It Pecks Us And Pecks Us Until We’re 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 Shteyngart

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Summer Is A Latvian

Gary Shteyngart

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Summer Is A Latvian Chicken. We Make Foolish Choices. We Think We’re Young Again. We Run With Outstretched Arms Toward An Object Of Love And It Pecks Us And Pecks Us Until We’re 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.

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I Was A Jackass In Many Ways. I Projected That Cruelty Towards Others, That Kid Whose Hand I Was Wringing. If I Could Have Hurt A Hundred Weaklings - Weaker Than Me, And I Was Already Very Weak - I Would. I Was Dying To Hurt Somebody, To Pay It Forward.

Satire Always Benefits When Evil And Stupidity Collide.

I Love To Act, I've Always Wanted To Be An Actor. I Think That Acting And Fiction Go Nicely Together - Being Able To Visualize Language As Something You Perform, Not Just Something That's There On The Page.

The Memoirs I Love Are All Very Intense. If You're Going To Do A Memoir And Protect Yourself, What The Hell's The Point? Just Do Fiction.

Remember This... Develop A Sense Of Nostalgia For Something, Or You'll Never Figure Out What's Important.

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Usually, With A Novel, You Start With No Idea What To Do Because Your Job Is To Create Convincing Characters And Then They Just Run Around Getting Crazy. The Problem With Writing A Memoir, Obviously, Is You Can't Do That Because You Sort Of Know What's Going To Happen. Because You're The Character.

Asthmatic Immigrant Learns To Breathe By Writing.

One Should Learn From A Book. Books Have A Lot To Teach Us. They Have A Lot Of Empathy To Impart To Us, But They Should Also Be Fun. This Stuff Is Fun! You Shouldn't Pick Up A Book And Say, "oh My God, I'm Gonna Better Myself By Reading This." You May Better Yourself By Reading This, But Who Cares? Just Have Fun.

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I Always Think That Good Writers Should Be Growing Up On The Brink Of Death - It Really Lets Them See Mortality Very Clearly.

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People Always Write On My Facebook That They've Seen Somebody They Thought Was Me On The Subway, And I Was Cursing Badly.

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Do Not Throw Away Your Heart. Keep Your Heart. Your Heart Is All That Matters ... Throw Away Your Ancestors! ... Throw Away Your Shyness And The Anger That Lies Just A Few Inches Beneath ... Accept The Truth! And If There Is More Than One Truth, Then Learn To Do The Difficult Work -- Learn To Choose. You Are Good Enough, You Are Human Enough, To Choose!

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I 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.

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My Parents Were Kind Enough To Spend Hours Talking To Me.

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