Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes

And anyway, there is no comfort here on Earth. There is pretending, there are words, but there is no peace. Nothing is good here. Nothing. Every place you go on Earth, there is more nonsense. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

How'd you do?" I remember the shopgirl asked, as though I may have done well or poorly. Why was my performance always called into question? Of course the dress looked awful on me. The shopgirl must have predicted that. But why was it I who had failed, and not the dress? "How did the dress do?" Is what she should have asked instead. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Pondering all this down in Reva's black room under her sad, pilly sheets, I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn't bring them up in me. I couldn't even locate where my emotions came from. My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best - a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system - a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love? ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I had the vague notion that bearing arms was in poor taste. Unless you were terribly wealthy, hunting was for the brutish lower class, uncivilized country folk, primitive types, people who were dumb and callous and ugly. Violence was just another function of the body, no less unusual than sweating or vomiting. It sat on the same shelf as sexual intercourse. The two got mixed up quite often, it seemed. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I don't like talking too much about my personal life, but it all goes into my work. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I love art because I feel that it's evidence of the great shared universal power. I like art that feels real, that cuts the bullshit. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I suppose a part of me wished when I put my key in the door, it would magically open into a different apartment, a different life, a place so bright with joy and excitement that I'd be temporarily blinded when I first saw it. I pictured what a documentary film crew would capture in my face as I glimpsed this whole new world before me, like in those home improvement shows Reva liked to watch when she came over. First, I'd cringe with surprise. But then, once my eyes adjusted to the light, they'd grow wide and glisten with awe. I'd drop the keys and the coffee and wander in, spinning around with my jaw hanging open, shocked at the transformation of my dim, gray apartment into a paradise of realized dreams. But what would it look like exactly? I had no idea. When I tried to imagine this new place, all I could come up with was a cheesy mural of a rainbow, a man in a white bunny costume, a set of dentures in a glass, a huge slice of watermelon on a yellow plate - an odd prediction, maybe, of when I'm ninety-five and losing my mind in an assisted-living facility where they treat the elderly residents like retarded children. I should be so lucky, I thought. I opened the door to my apartment, and, of course, nothing had changed. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I've found that people get particularly frustrated and shut down when women in fiction are disgusting or disordered. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

The second hand on the clock shook and bolted forward like someone at first terrified with anxiety, then, bolstered by desperation, jumping off a cliff only to get stuck in midair. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I took a Polaroid of her one night and stuck it into the frame of the mirror in the living room. Reva thought it was a loving gesture, but the photo was really meant as a reminder of how little I enjoyed her company if I felt like calling her later while I was under the influence. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

But I was still anxious. Trevor Trevor Trevor. I might have felt better if he were dead, I thought, since behind every memory of him was the possibility of reconciling, and thus more heartbreak and indignity. I felt weak. My nerves were frayed and fragile, like tattered silk. Sleep had not yet solved my crankiness, my impatience, my memory. It seemed like everything was now somehow linked to getting back what I'd lost. I could picture my selfhood, my past, my psyche like a dump truck filled with trash. Sleep was the hydraulic piston that lifted the bed of the truck up, ready to dump everything out somewhere, but Trevor was stuck in the tailgate, blocking the flow of garbage. I was afraid things would be like that forever. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I miss you," she said, her voice cracking a little. Maybe she thought those words would break through to my heart. I'd been taking Nembutals all day. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

If you look at the horror genre, that work is all about making people uncomfortable by stimulating our fear of death. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I found my way into the Met one afternoon in early September. I guess I wanted to see what other people had done with their lives, people who had made art alone, who had stared long and hard at bowls of fruit. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I couldn't be bothered to deal with fixing things. I preferred to wallow in the problem, dream of better days. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

For a moment I felt joyful, and then I felt completely exhausted. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I loved Reva, but I didn't like her anymore. We'd been friends since college, long enough that all we had left in common was our history together, a complex circuit of resentment, memory, jealousy, denial, and a few dresses I'd let Reva borrow, which she'd promised to dry clean and return but never did. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

On our first date, he bought me a taco, talked at length about the ancients' theories of light, how it streams at angles to align events in space and time, that it is the source of all information, determines every outcome, how we can reflect it to summon aliens using mirrored bowls of water. I asked what the point of it all was, but he didn't seem to hear me. Lying on the grass outside a tennis arena, he held my face toward the sun, stared sideways at my eyeballs, and began to cry. He told me I was the sign he'd been waiting for and, like looking into a crystal ball, he'd just read a private message from God in the silvery vortex of my left pupil. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

All I had to offer were my skills as a doormat, a blank wall, someone desperate enough to do anything - just short of murder, let's say - simply to get someone to like me, let alone love me. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

People died all the time. Why couldn't I? ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I needed a way out of this - the bathroom, the pills, the sleeplessness, the failed, stupid life. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Life was repetitive, resonated at a low hum. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

The art world had turned out to be like the stock market, a reflection of political trends and the persuasions of capitalism, fueled by greed and gossip and cocaine. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

The Weirdos

On our first date, he bought me a taco, talked at length about the ancients' theories of light, how it streams at all angles to align events in space and time, that it is the source of all information, determines every outcome, how we can reflect it to summon aliens using mirrored bowls of water. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

In my own experience, I've found that it's very difficult to make peace with women. We tend to be competitive and feel angry. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

On a good day, every small thing is enchanting. Everything is a miracle. There is no emptiness. There is no need for forgiveness or escape or medicine. I hear only the wind in the trees, and my devils hatching their sacral plans, fusing all the shattered pieces together into a blanket of ice. I have found that it's under that ice that I can feel I am just another normal person. In the dark and cold, I am at 'peace. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

That is what I imagined life to be-one long sentence of waiting out the clock. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Violence was just another function of the body, no less unusual than sweating or vomiting. It sat on the same shelf as sexual intercourse. The two got mixed up quite often, it seemed. For ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I wasn't entirely awake, but I couldn't cross the line into sleep. 'Go. Go on. The abyss is right there. Just a few more steps.' But I was too tired to break through the glass. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

You can see wealth in people no matter what they're wearing. It's in the cut of their chins, a certain gloss to the skin, a drag and pause to their responsiveness. When poor people hear a loud noise, they whip their heads around. Wealthy people finish their sentences, then just glance back. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I went home and went to sleep. Outside of the occasional irritation, I had no nightmares, no passions, no desires, no great pains. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I'll lend you my confidence boosting CD set," she would say if I alluded to any concern or worry . . .

Every few weeks, she had a whole new paradigm for living, and I had to hear about it. "Get good at knowing when you're tired," she'd advised me once. "Too many women wear themselves thin these days." A lifestyle tip from Get the Most Out of Your Day, Ladies included the suggestion to preplan your outfits for the workweek on Sunday evenings.

"That way you won't be second-guessing yourself in the morning."

I really hated when she talked like that. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Having a trash chute was one of my favorite things about my building. It made me feel important, like I was participating in the world. My trash mixed with the trash of others. The things I touched touched things other people had touched. I was contributing. I was connecting. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I still couldn't accept that Trevor was a loser and a moron. I didn't want to believe that I could have degraded myself for someone who didn't deserve it. I was still stuck on that bit of vanity. But I was determined to sleep it away. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I didn't believe in heaven, but I did believe in hell. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I got sloppy and lazy at work, emptier, less there. This pleased me, but having to do things became very problematic. When people spoke, I had to repeat what they'd said in my mind before understanding it. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Her loyalty was absurd. This was what kept us going. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

You want to stay here and sleep your life away? That's it?"

"If you knew what would make you happy, wouldn't you do it?" I asked her.

"See, you do want to be happy. Then why did you tell me that being happy is dumb?" she asked. "You said that to me more than once."

"Let me be dumb," I said, glugging the NyQuil. "You go be smart and tell me how great it is. I'll be here, hibernating."

Reva rolled her eyes.

"It's natural," I told her. "People used to hibernate all the time."

"People never hibernated. Where are you getting this?"

She could look really pathetic when she was outraged. She got up and stood there holding her stupid knockoff Kate Spade bag or whatever it was, her hair pulled back into a ponytail and crowned with a useless, plastic, tortoiseshell headband. She was always getting her hair blown out, her eyebrows waxed into thin, arched, parentheses, her fingernails painted various shades of pink and purple, as though all of this made her a wonderful person.

"It's not up for discussion, Reva. This is what I'm doing. If you can't accept it, then you don't have to. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I could plan to do something and then find myself doing the opposite. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I've heard a sip of gin will make you immune to mosquitoes and other pests. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I felt I needed to hide a little. My mind needed a smaller world to roam. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I was trapped. The day would be hell. I would suffer. I felt I might not survive. I needed a dark, quiet room, my videos, my bed, my pills. I hadn't been this far from home in many months. I was frightened. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

The ocean beyond like a canyon of woe, tumbling and icy all day and night, was so thunderous, I pictured God himself emerging from the water, laughing at us all in spite. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

The first time I met Dr. Tuttle, she wore a foam neck brace because of a "taxi accident" and was holding an obese tabby, whom she introduced as "my eldest. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you'd feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I always thought it was pathetic that Reva had chosen to stay in the area after graduation, but passing through it in the cab, in my frenzied state of despair, I understood: there was stability in living in the past. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

What's inspiring me the most [is] injustice. My own growth as a member of the human race, in terms of the veils being lifted, seeing more of the beauty and also the horror. A sense of my own purpose in this life. Love ... ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I felt both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you'd feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide. Not that what I was doing was suicide. In fact, it was the opposite of suicide. My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought it was going to save my life. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Someone said once that pupils were just empty space, black holes, twin caves of infinite nothingness. "When something disappears, that's usually where it disappears - into the black holes in our eyes." I couldn't remember who had said it. I watched my reflection disappear in the steam. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

We probably shouldn't be friends," I told her, stretching out on the sofa. "I've been thinking about it, and I see no reason to continue. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

In the distance, people were living lives, having fun, learning, making money, fighting and walking around and falling in and out of love. People were being born, growing up, dropping dead. Trevor was probably spending his Christmas vacation with some woman in Hawaii or Bali or Tulum. He was probably fingering her at that very moment, telling her he loved her. He might actually be happy. I shut the window and lowered all the blinds. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

The idea that my brains could be untangled, straightened out, and thus refashioned into a state of peace and sanity was a comforting fantasy. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I'm not a junkie or something," I said defensively. "I'm taking some time off. This is my year of rest and relaxation. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

It's insane that people have these Internet identities. It has very little to do with who we really are. As a writer, who I'm friends with, how I spend my time, what I look like, what I wear, what I eat, what kind of music I like - it's totally not important to the work. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I feel very, very alone."

"We're all alone, Reva," I told her. It was true: I was, she was. This was the maximum comfort I could offer. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Walter and I had shared a mind, of course. Couples get that way. I think it has something to do with sharing a bed. The mind, untethered during sleep, travels up and away, dancing, sometimes in partners. Things pass back and forth in dreams. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

If, when I woke up in June, life still wasn't worth the trouble, I would end it. I would jump. This was the deal I made. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I wondered if I might be dead, and I felt no sorrow, only worry over the afterlife, if it was going to be just like this, just as boring. If I'm dead, I thought, let this be the end. The silliness. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Things were alive. Life buzzed between each shade of green, from dark pines and supple ferns to lime green moss growing on a huge, dry gray rock. Honey locusts and ginkgos aflare in yellows. What was cowardly about the color yellow? Nothing ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

My favorite days were the ones that barely registered. I'd catch myself not breathing, slumped on the sofa, staring at an eddy of dust tumbling across the hardwood floor in the draft, and I'd remember that I was alive for a second, then fade back out. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

She was an expert at conflating canned advice with any excuse for drinking to oblivion. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I've always been interested in family secrets and what happens behind closed doors. I find that fascinating and creepy - that's why I read: because I want to know other people's secrets. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Sometimes I felt that my mind was just a soft cloud of air around me, taking in whatever flew in, spinning it around, and then delivering it back out into the ether. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

A friend is someone who helps you hide the body - that ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

And yet I was aware of the nothingness. I was awake in the sleep, somehow. I felt good. Almost happy. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I learned the long way about love, tried every house on the block before I got it right. Now, finally, I love alone. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

She suggested I keep a log of my dreams as a way of tracking the 'waning intensity of suffering.'

'I don't like the term "dream journal,"' she told me at our in-person appointment in June. 'I prefer "night vision log. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

It was lunacy, this idea, that I could sleep myself into a new life. Preposterous. But there I was, approaching the depths of my journey ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I flipped it over: Ping Xi's business card with his name, number, e-mail address, and the corniest quotation I'd ever read: "Every act of creation is an act of destruction. - Pablo Picasso ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

A grown woman is like a coyote--she can get by on very little. Men are more like house cats. Leave them alone for too long and they'll die of sadness ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Reva often spoke about 'settling down.' That sounded like death to me.

'I'd rather be alone than anybody's live-in prostitute,' I said to Reva. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Tell me everything!" she'd cry, salivating. Poor Reva. She might actually have thought I was capable of sharing things. "Friends forever?" She'd want us to make some sacred pact. She always wanted to make pacts. "Let's make a pact to have brunch at least twice a month. Let's promise to go for a walk through Central Park every Saturday. Let's have a daily call-time. Will you swear to take a ski trip this year? It burns so many calories. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I've lived with many alcoholic men over the years, and each has taught me that it is useless to worry, fruitless to ask why, suicide to try to help them. They are who they are for better and worse. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Sometimes I feel dead," I told her, "and I hate everybody. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Mind over matter, people say. But what is matter, anyway? When you look at it under a microscope, it's just tiny bits of stuff. Atomic particles. Sub-atomic particles. Look deeper and deeper and eventually you'll find nothing. We're mostly empty space. We're mostly nothing. Tra-la-la. And we're all the same nothingness. You and me, just filling the space with nothingness. We could walk through walls if we put our minds to it, people say. What they don't mention is that walking through a wall would most likely kill you. Don't forget that. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Soon, I'd be home again. Soon, God willing, I'd be asleep. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Our repartee would be rich with subtlety and sarcasm, as smart and funny as midcareer Woody Allen. Our fucking, like Werner Herzog, serious and perplexing. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

He and I agreed that people looked stupid when they were "having a good time. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I lay awake for a long time. It was like sitting in a cinema after the lights go down, waiting for the previews to begin. But nothing was happening. I regretted the coffee. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Now write this down because I have a feeling you're too psychotic to remember: Saturday, January twentieth, at two o'clock. And try the Infermiterol. Bye-bye. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I hoped they saw right through my death mask to my sad and fiery soul, though I doubt they saw me at all. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I could feel the certainty of a reality leeching out of me like calcium from a bone. I was starving my mind into obliqueness. I felt less and less. Words came and I spoke them in my head, then nestled in on the sound of them, got lost in the music. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

The world was out there still, but I hadn't looked at it in months. It was too much to consider in all, stretching out, a circular planet covered in creatures and things growing, all of it spinning slowly on an axis created by what - some freak accident? It seemed implausible. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Every time I saw Lacey, she'd gained five more pounds. She was turning into the kind of obese girl who does her hair like a forties pinup and wears bright red lipstick, a blue polka-dot dress with a white doily collar, colorful tattoos across her huge, smushed cleavage, as if these considerations would distract us from how fat and miserable she'd become. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

If you want something and can't have it, want something else. Want what you deserve. You'll probably get it. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

It was already getting dark out, but I kept my sunglasses on. I didn't want to have to look anybody in the eye. I didn't want to relate to anybody too keenly. Plus, the fluorescent lights at the drug store were blinding. If I could have purchased my medications from a vending machine, I would have paid double for them. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I don't care about being a literary personality - that doesn't appeal to me, especially because the literary world doesn't appeal to me. I actually don't feel like I even belong in it. If this was high school, I would be sitting with the Goths, looking at everyone, being like, 'Whatever.' ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

There are alternatives to medication, though they tend to have more disruptive side effects."

"Like what?"

"Have you ever been in love?"

"In what sense?"

"We'll cross that road when we come to it. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

It's remarkable what people become blind to when they're in such darkness. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Puberty extends into your twenties, for sure, and some people don't get over that until much later in life. I feel like I'm just starting to get over puberty - basically twenty years of insufferable, totally self-obsessed hell. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

My first impression of him was that he was free spirited, clever, funny. That proved to be completely inaccurate. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

An interesting book about possums. Animals have so much wisdom," Dr. Tuttle paused. "I hope you're not a vegetarian," she said, lowering her glasses.

"I'm not."

"That's a relief. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

My dad is a gentle and brilliant Iranian violinist. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I've always known what I'm meant to do. The path of my life has been about discovering what I need to do to support myself as a writer. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I can't point to any one event that resulted in my decision to go into hibernation. Initially, I just wanted some downers to drown out my thoughts and judgments, since the constant barrage made it hard not to hate everyone and everything. I thought life would be more tolerable if my brain were slower to condemn the world around me. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

I am overcome by awe, not because she looks like Reva, and I think it's her, almost exactly her, and not because Reva and I had been friends, or because I'll never see her again, but because she is beautiful. There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Here is how I spend my days now. I live in a beautiful place. I sleep in a beautiful bed. I eat beautiful food. I go for walks through beautiful places. I care for people deeply. At night my bed is full of love, because I alone am in it. I cry easily, from pain and pleasure, and I don't apologize for that. In the mornings I step outside and I'm thankful for another day. It took me many years to arrive at such a life. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

It was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn't. ~ Otessa Moshfegh