Top 500 Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “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

352. “My hibernation was self-preservational.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

353. “I hated talking to people.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

355. “Hell was the only destination she ever used in her metaphors.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

356. “This woman was beautiful, and looked vaguely familiar, in the way all beautiful people look familiar. So within 30 seconds I decided she must be an idiot.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

357. “When you die, leave not a trace. Sweep up any evidence of your existence.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

358. “I wasn’t radical at all. I was simply unhappy.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

359. “I love you.” Maybe she did, and that’s why I hated her.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

360. “And he was short. I had never dated a short man before. The thought crossed my mind: Perhaps I am learning humility. Perhaps this man is the answer to my prayers.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

361. “She was empty. ‘I am an object in the room,’ she had told herself. ‘That is all that I am.’ This belief spared her the agony of her own intelligence while she was a slave to the nuns.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

362. “He was like that – regretful and arrogant and illogical at once. I don’t think he ever really loved his children. The wedding band he continued to wear years after her death suggested that he’d loved our mother to some degrees at least. But I suspect he was incapable of love, real love. He was a cruel character. Imagining his parents beating him as a child is the only path to forgiveness that I have found so far. It isn’t perfect, but it does the trick.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

363. “Sometimes friends are better than family, because you can say anything. Nobody gets mad. It’s a different kind of love.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

364. “I felt like killing my father, but I didn’t want him to die.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

366. “But maybe I’d need something to read on my ride to my future, I thought. I could borrow a few of the finer books from the X-ville library, disappear and never return them.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

367. “I would miss that old library. I couldn’t realize at the time how those books had saved me.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

368. “I’d never been jealous of any young woman’s looks. For me, it was like seeing a cute little squirrel. This one has big eyes, that one has a charming stripe, et cetera. But some women really take offense at youth and beauty.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

369. “The law was all set up to keep people convinced their fears were well-guided. They came up with ways to prove themselves right about people who seemed a little different.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

370. “But such was death – it had nothing to say.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

371. “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

372. “Tissues stained with mascara like crushed inkblot tests piled up on her.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

373. “I was infatuated with her, clearly. And I felt in a way that just by knowing her, I was graduating out of my misery. I was making some progress.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

374. “Makeup made a girl look so desperate, I thought. People were so dishonest with their clothes and personalities.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

375. “And he explained something he thought most people didn’t understand about intelligence. “It comes from the heart,” he said, beating his chest with his fist. “It has a lot to do with your blood type. And magnets.” That one gave me pause.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

376. “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

377. “Mr. Polk, I knew, held a secret I’d been wanting to understand. He knew death, I suppose. Maybe it was that simple.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

378. “Having never known love before, he couldn’t recognize the feeling. Something was terribly wrong, he felt.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

379. “He needed fodder for analysis. But the project was beyond issues of “identity” and “society” and “institutions.” Mine was a quest for a new spirit. I wasn’t going to explain that to Ping Xi. He would think he was understood me. But he couldn’t understand me. He wasn’t supposed to.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

380. “I loved it, or at least I thought I ought to love it – I’ve never been very clear on that distinction.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

381. “It’s the captain. He looks fresh shaved. My own face is covered in little wires that amount to nothing but the look of dirt. It is a kind of dirt, things that grow out from me. It means I have dirt deep inside of me. A head full of dirt, maybe. When I’ve had a few, a nice soft dirt. Otherwise I am livewired, hungry-eyed like a scorned wolf, but give the appearance of a nervous boy, tittering along in search of something, namely, another drink.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

383. “I’d been up on bad cocaine and drinking for days. I’d roped a few man back to my apartment and showed them all my belongings, stretched out flesh-colored tights and proposed we take turns hanging each other. Nobody last more than a few hours.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

384. “Growing up, I learned I’d be praised and rewarded for my suffering, for my strong efforts to be good, but every year God smote.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

385. “I felt hopeful. I felt I was on my way to a great transformation.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

386. “Una notte la fotografai con la Polaroid e infilai la foto nella cornice dello specchio in soggiorno. Reva pensava fosse un gesto amorevole, ma la foto per me era un memento di quanto poco mi divertiva la sua compagnia se mi veniva voglia di chiamarla quando ero sotto l’effetto di farmaci.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

387. “But of course she was dead wrong. We New Englanders are uptight for sure, but we have strong minds. We use our imaginations effectively. We don’t waste our brains on magical notions or useless frills, but we do have the ability to fantasize.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

388. “Women killed children all the time. They are the closest to them and suffer the most having to raise them up.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

389. “Something struck me as I watched Randy scratch his elbow, then lean against the door frame of the visitation room – I was no longer in love with him. Looking at him with eyes now glazed over in my new affection for Rebecca, he seemed like a nobody, a face in a crowd, gray and meaningless like an old newspaper clipping of a story I’d read so many times, it no longer impressed me. Love can be like that. It can vanish in an instant.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

390. “There was no right way to deal with grief, of course. When God gives you more than you can tolerate, you turn to instinct. And instinct is a force beyond anyone’s control.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

391. “She wasn’t resting. She was not in a state of peace. She was in no state, not being. The peace to be had, I thought, watching them pull the sheet over her head, was mine.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

392. “A serious rest. My mouth watered. Good strong American sleep. Those pills would scrape out the sludge of Infermiterol left in my mind. Then I’d feel better. Then I’d be set. I’d live easy. I’d think easy. My brain would glide. I looked at the assortment of pills in my palm. Good-bye, bad dream. I wished I had my Polaroid camera to document the scene.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

393. “I wondered if they’d watched the grapes wither and shrivel up, if they’d had to go to the market to replace them, and if, before they threw the shriveled strand of grapes away, they’d eaten a few.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

394. “She awoke in my heart some long-sleeping dragon.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

395. “It’s a lonely life.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

396. “Never trust anyone who holds so strictly to decorum.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

397. “Nothing calls more attention to one’s odor than a fragrance meant to mask it.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

398. “And how nice it was to know that one could forget such things. We are resilient. We suffer, heal, and proceed.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

399. “There was a tiny, living creature in her womb. The product of an accident. A side effect of delusion and sloppiness.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

400. “All the men I’d ever been with, young as well as old, had been detached and unfriendly.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh