Top 500 Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “My blind eye was the one real comfort I felt I could give her.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

402. “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

403. “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

404. “At that moment, I felt happy. Meeting Rebecca was like learning to dance, discovering jazz. It was like falling in love for the first time. I had always been waiting for my future to erupt around me in an avalanche of glory, and now I felt it was really happening. Rebecca was all it took. Per aspera ad astra.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

405. “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

406. “Perhaps God liked her best, she thought, because she asked for so little.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

408. “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

409. “During the school year, all I did was contend with stupidity and ignorance. That’s what teachers are paid to do. How I got stuck teaching Dickens to fourteen-year-olds is a mystery to me.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

411. “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

412. “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

413. “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

414. “Marek guessed that Villiam could use his wealth to influence God’s will. That was the way things worked, Marek thought. If you didn’t have money, you had to be good.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

416. “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.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

417. “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

418. “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

419. “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

420. “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

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

422. “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

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

426. “Weekends I was only awake for a few hours a day. And when I was awake, I wasn’t fully so, but in a kind of murk, a dim state between the real and the dream. I got sloppy and lazy at work, grayer, 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. I told Dr. Tuttle I was having trouble concentrating. She said it was probably due to “brain mist.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

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

— Ottessa Moshfegh

428. “Being pretty only kept me trapped in a world that valued looks above all else.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

429. “I wasn’t worth the calories.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

430. “I heard a child ask his young mother, pointing to a bird that looked like a psychedelic crow. Its feathers were iridescent black, a rainbow reflected in the gleaming darkness, eyes bright white and alive, vigilant. “A grackle,” the woman replied.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

431. “So I was good. I did all the right things. I rebelled in silent ways, with my thoughts.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

432. “To hell with God. And to hell with your father.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

433. “I wanted the old half life back.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

434. “He didn’t believe she could carry a child to term. She was too old – already twenty-eight – and too frail.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

435. “No man is worth paying for,” I told her.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

436. “He was incapable of forgiveness because he was so addled by his own grief and grudges.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

437. “I was the vacant, repressed depressive, and she was the obsessive blabbermouth, always knocking on my door, asking random questions, looking for any excuse to talk. I spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling that year, trying to cancel out thoughts about death with thoughts about nothingness.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

438. “The silver key opened her apartment door. I walked inside. “Hello?” I could have sworn I smelled puke in the darkness.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

439. “I didn’t want her to leave. The white glare off the overhead light gleamed across her collarbones. She was beautiful, with all her nerves and all her complicated, circuitous feelings and contradictions and fears.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

440. “What I mean to say is that I was not fundamentally unattractive. I was just invisible.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

441. “Similarly, I did not like to dance or do sports. I did not listen to the Beatles or watch Ed Sullivan on TV. I wasn’t interested in fun or popularity back then. I preferred to read about ancient times, distant lands. Knowledge of anything current or faddish made me feel I was just a victim of isolation. If I avoided all that on purpose, I could believe I was in control.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

442. “The best was when I could see the hard face of a cold-hearted killer breaking through the chubby cheeks and callow softness of youth.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

443. “The very fact that other people moved their bowels filled me with awe.” p. 110-111.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

444. “FOR A YEAR OR SO, everything seemed fine with Natasha. The most grief she gave me was about ordering the wrong pens. “Why do we have all these cheap clicky pens? They’re so loud when you click them. You can’t hear this?” She stood there, clicking at me. “Sorry, Natasha,” I said. “I’ll order quieter pens.” “Has FedEx come yet?”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

445. “Not that what I was doing was suicide. In fact, it was the opposite of suicide. My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

446. “Maybe she should keep the baby, I thought. Maybe a baby would wake her up.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

447. “She packed everything into the shopping bags with the urgent efficiency of someone building a sand castle at sundown, as the tide comes in. Like a dream you know will end. If I move fast enough, I won’t wake the gods.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

448. “I hoped that they’d had some respect for the stuff they were immortalizing.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

449. “His own struggles seemed like petty complications, meaningless snags in the dull itinerary that was his life. Why couldn’t he live by instinct and appetite, be primitive, be free?”

— Ottessa Moshfegh

450. “He wasn’t interested in understanding himself or evolving. He just wanted to shock people. And he wanted people to love and despise him for it. His audience, of course, would never truly be shocked. People were only delighted at his concepts. He was an art-world hack. But he was successful.”

— Ottessa Moshfegh