Top 500 Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

202. “If he could have it his way, nobody would ever say anything again. The entire world would go silent. Even the clocks wouldn’t tick. All that mattered would be the beating of hearts, the widening and narrowing of pupils, the whirling of ties and loose strands of hair in the wind – nothing voluntary, nothing false.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

203. “He was very intelligent and preoccupied with death and suffering.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

204. “I once asked her whether her jealousy had anything to do with her being Jewish, if she thought things came easier to me because I was a WASP.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

205. “Jude didn’t understand forgiveness. He was incapable of forgiveness because he was so addled by his own grief and grudges. This bad blood was what kept Jude’s heart pumping.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

206. “It’s either this or that. Decide and move forward. You spend so much time playing in your mind, like a sandbox. Everything just slipping through your fingers, nothing solid to hold.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

207. “She looked like Lee Miller if Lee Miller had been a bedroom drunk.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

208. “It’s a lonely life.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

209. “I’d been stupid to believe that employment would add value to my life.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

210. “It’s funny how love can leap from one person to another, like a flea.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

211. “I figured that if I jumped out while I was on the Infermiterol, it would be a painless death. A blackout death. I’d either wake up safe in the apartment, or I wouldn’t. It was a risk I’d take forty times, every three days. 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

212. “Oxytocin is a hormone released during copulation,” my father went on, staring at the blank wall behind me. “Orgasm,” my mother whispered. “Biologically, oxytocin serves a purpose,” my father said. “That warm fuzzy feeling.” “It’s what bonds a couple together. Without it, the human species would have gone extinct a long time ago. Women experience its effects more powerfully than men do. It’s good to be aware of that.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

213. “They lamented the success of others. They thought that they wanted to be adored, to be influential, celebrated for their genius, that they deserved to be worshipped. But they could barely look at themselves in the mirror. They were all on Klonopin, was my guess.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

214. “I plunged into sleep full force once this arrangement had been made. It was an exciting time in my life. I felt hopeful. I felt I was on my way to a great transformation.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

215. “I still felt that the good things, the things I wanted, belonged to somebody else.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

216. “Men don’t feel bad the way you want them to,” I told her. “They just get grouchy and depressed when they can’t have what they want. That’s why you got fired. You’re depressing. Consider it a compliment, if you want.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

217. “He went outside, desperate for something, anything – an embrace or a blow to the head.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

218. “I watched that old world go by, away and away, gone gone gone, until, like me, it disappeared.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

219. “Truth be told, I was a glutton for punishment.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

220. “Soon we’ll be old and ugly. Life is short, you know? Die young and leave a beautiful corpse.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

221. “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.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

222. “When I came out of the cave, back out into the light, when I woke up at last, everything -the whole world-would be new again.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

223. “I lost track of time in this way. Days passed. Weeks. A few months went by.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

224. “It was exciting to feel so much spite for somebody. It inspired me; I almost felt like dancing. If I was an artist, I thought, I would paint a huge black-and-red canvas, stabbing with my brush in a frenzy until I fell down on the floor in a heap, sweating and dizzy, the world spinning above me. I wished I could be breathless like that, and for so long I’d believed I couldn’t.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

225. “His heart growled like a trapped animal, brooding and useless.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

226. “My little world of exhaust and vomit was somehow wonderful.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

227. “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

228. “I was plagued with misery, anxiety, a wish to escape the prison of my mind and body.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

229. “Me alejaba de cualquier cosa que pudiera despertarme el intelecto o darme envidia o ansiedad.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

230. “We all have our own ways to cope with stress,” she said, and rambled on about the benefits of habitual behaviors. “Self-soothing,” is how she described it. “Like meditation.” I yawned, hating her.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

231. “She was a strong girl, but she carried death with her. Death is like that. Like a beggar that follows you down the road. And kills you.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

232. “The slightest thing delighted him. I wished I could be more like that, and tried to promise myself I’d work harder to be happier.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

233. “But as a young woman in X-ville, I had no idea that other people – men or women – felt things as deeply as I did.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

234. “I steered clear of anything that might pique my intellect or make me envious or anxious. I kept my head down.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

235. “A little lying never hurt anybody. It kept the bounds of what one person was distinct from what another person was.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

236. “Sometimes I woke up with my face wet with tears.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

237. “Sometimes I feel dead,” I told her, “and I hate everybody. Does that count?” “Oh, that counts. That certainly counts.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

238. “Mind over matter, people say, But what is matter, anyway?”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

239. “In Artforum, Ronald Jones had called me a “bloated nymph with dead man eyes.” Phyllis Braff had condemned the show as “a product of Oedipal lust” in the New York Times.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

240. “Pain is not the only touchstone for growth.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

241. “I closed my eyes. I could go anywhere with my eyes closed to the moon if I wanted, listen to the deafening echo of silence as it spun through space. That is the sound of silence, isn’t it? The sound of death? The sound of nonexistence? The friction of not being? Everyone on Earth had heard of death, from time to time. How many have fallen there! Others had lived and died before me.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

242. “She had indeed seen death and she was not afraid of it. What scared her were other people and their immovable selfishness.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

243. “Did you bring your book of nightmares?” Dr. Tuttle asked, sitting down behind her desk.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

244. “I wasn’t worth the calories.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

245. “Children are selfish, she thought. They rob you of life. They thrive as you toil and wither, and then they bury you, their tears never once falling out of regret for what they’ve stolen. That.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

246. “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.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

247. “I still felt like she was up to something down there, bitter and suffering as the flesh on her body withered and sank away from her bones. Did she blame me? We buried her in a carnation pink Thierry Mugler suit. Her hair was perfect. Her lipstick was perfect, blood red, Christian Dior 999. If I unearthed her now, would the lipstick have faded? Either way, she’d be a stiff husk, like the sloughed-off exoskeleton of a huge insect. That was what my mother was.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

248. “I am interested in disgust.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

249. “Looking at my reflection really did soothe me, though I hated my face with a passion. Such is the life of the self-obsessed.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

250. “I let her do whatever she wanted to do to me that day in the cabin. It wasn’t painful, nor was it terrifying, but it was disgusting – just as I’d always hoped it to be.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh