Top 500 Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “My hibernation was self-preservational.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

402. “I hated talking to people.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

404. “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

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

408. “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

409. “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

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

411. “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

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

413. “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

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

415. “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

416. “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

417. “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

418. “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

419. “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

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

421. “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

422. “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

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

424. “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

425. “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

426. “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

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

432. “My blind eye was the one real comfort I felt I could give her.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

433. “When she arrived that Tuesday, bustling in from the frigid morning snowdrifts, she whirled off her coat as though in slow motion – this is how I remember it – and shook it like a bullfighter as she strode up the corridor toward me, hair rippling behind her, eyes like daggers shooting down straight through my heart to my guts. She was pure magic.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

434. “Once Villiam caught his breath, he thanked the nun, promised her fine hospitality as long as she cared to stay, and then went on eating, a bit more carefully this time, engaging the priest in a long discussion of hell, its landscape, its economy, what kind of house the Devil lived in, how he managed his servants, and how he had escaped into the realm of Earth. And then he asked, as though he might be serious, ‘How long will God keep heaven’s gate closed? Hypothetically speaking.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

435. “I loved Reva, but I didn’t like her anymore.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

436. “The sound of tires on the wet pavement. A window was open so I could hear it. The sweet smell of spring crept in. The world was out there still, but I hadn’t looked at it in months. It was too much to consider it 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. The world could be flat just as easily as it could be round. Who could prove anything?”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

437. “Love can reappear, too, but never again unscathed. The second round is inevitably accompanied by doubt, intention, self-disgust.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

438. “You seem depressed,” she said with concern. I said I wasn’t depressed; I was just bored. I hadn’t considered that if the only thing that keeps you going all day is knowing you’ll get to turn on the TV after dinner, you probably are depressed.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

439. “It all seemed so trite. “Why tell stories?” he wondered aloud. “As soon as something is over, that’s it. Why revive it constantly? Things happen, and then more things, inevitably, happen next. So?” He shrugged. His hands trembled. He tried to smile, but he was now, indeed, terribly overcome.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

440. “I could see they were connected to something that had immense power over them. This was what happened when the mindspace was the internet, I thought. One loses one’s sense of self. One’s mind can go anywhere. And at the same time, the mind becomes lame when it is connected to something so consuming.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

441. “What brings you here?” she asked. “Depression?”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

442. “The worst crime I could commit in his eyes was to do anything for my own pleasure, anything outside of my daughterly duties. Evidence of a will of my own was seen as the ultimate betrayal.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

443. “The servants’ faith excluded marriage. They didn’t believe a man should own a woman, nor should a man be responsible for her welfare. They believed that everyone should be free to do as they please. The.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

444. “I slept around in spurts, going out more, then less. Nothing ever panned out in terms of “love.” Reva often spoke about “settling down.” That sounded like death to me.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

445. “He struck me as a reptilian, small-hearted being, someone placed on a planet to strike a chord with similar people, people who distracted themselves with money and conversation rather than sink their hands and teeth into the world around them. Shallow, I guess. But there were worse people on this Earth.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

446. “I was born into privilege,” I told Ping Xi. “I am not going to squander that. I’m not a moron.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

447. “But it was all very regulated, I thought. It was all totally aboveboard. I just wanted to sleep all the time. I had a plan. “I’m not a junkie or something,” I said defensively.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

448. “I simply can’t have roommates. I like my own space.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

449. “I was never allowed to have any pets. Sometimes I think a puppy might have changed everything.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

450. “I doubt she deserved the amount of hatred I directed at her, but I loathed just about everybody back then.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh