Eileen Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes

People truly engaged in life have messy houses.

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.

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

Idealism without consequences is the pathetic dream of every spoiled brat, I suppose.

Anyway, I don't trust those people who poke around sad people's minds and tell them how interesting it all is up there. It's not interesting.

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

Furthermore, as is typical for any isolated, intelligent young person, I thought I was the only one with any consciousness, any awareness of how odd it was to be alive, to be a creature on this strange planet Earth.

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.

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

I didn’t like dogs. Not because they scared me—they didn’t—but because their deaths were so much harder to take than people’s.

It’s easy to tell the dirtiest minds—look for the cleanest fingernails.

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

I'd never learned how to relate to people, much less how to speak up for myself. I preferred to sit and rage quietly.

Some families are so sick, so twisted, the only way out is for someone to die.

Thus, I lived in perpetual fantasy. And like all intelligent young women, I hid my shameful perversions under a facade of prudishness. Of course I did. It's easy to tell the dirtiest minds-look for the cleanest fingernails.

That is what I imagined life to be—one long sentence of waiting out the clock.

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

I didn’t believe in heaven, but I did believe in hell.

Those people with perfect houses are simply obsessed with death. A house that is so well maintained, furnished with good-looking furniture of high quality, decorated tastefully, everything in its place, becomes a living tomb. People truly engaged in life have messy houses.

I looked so boring, lifeless, immune and unaffected, but in truth I was always furious, seething, my thoughts racing, my mind like a killer’s. It was easy to hide behind the dull face I wore, moping around. I really thought I had everybody fooled. And I didn’t really read books about flowers or home economics. I liked books about awful things—murder, illness, death.

There is nobody watching you when you’re alone. You decide for yourself what’s right and wrong. There are no prizes for good little girls. If you want something, fight for it. Don’t be a fool.

There’s nothing I detest more than men with happy childhoods.

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.

I was nervous. It had been a long time since I’d gone any place I wanted to be.

I can imagine myself saying at the time that life itself was like a book borrowed from the library—something that did not belong to me and was due to expire. How silly.

You can always tell something when a woman is overdressed---either she's an outsider, or she's insane.

It also concerned me that my demise would have no great impact, that I could blow my head off and people would say, “That’s all right. Let’s get something to eat.” That

It's the map of my childhood, my sadness, my Eden, my hell and home.

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.

Love me and I'll turn a blind eye to your faults.

Having to breathe was an embarrassment in itself. This was the kind of girl I was. Besides

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

Never trust anyone who holds so strictly to decorum.

I deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time. I tried to control myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier. I was like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong life—the life of a nobody, a waif, invisible. There's no better way to say it: I was not myself back then. I was someone else. I was Eileen.

I felt happy. I hardly felt like myself.

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

People will tell you the truth, if you really want to hear it.

Fashion’s for the fools, I know now, but I’ve learned that it’s good to be foolish from time to time. It keeps your spirit young.

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

You remind me of a Dutch painting," she said, staring into my eyes. "You have a strange face. Uncommon. Plain, but fascinating. It has a beautiful turbulence hidden in it. I love it. I bet you have brilliant dreams. I bet you dream of other worlds.

A grown woman is like a coyote - she can get by on very little.

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.

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

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.

Per aspera ad astra.

didn’t like movies for the same reason I don’t like novels: I don’t like being told how to think. It’s insulting.

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

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.

Having to breathe was an embarrassment in itself

It had been a long time since I'd gone anyplace I wanted to be.

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

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

When poor people hear a loud noise, they whip their heads around. Wealthy people finish their sentences, then just glance back.

The worst crime I could commit in his eyes was to do anything for my own pleasure, anything outside of my daughterly duties.

I didn’t really want to die. I didn’t always want to live, but I wasn’t going to kill myself.

a problem so complicated only a lobotomy could solve it

My little world of exhaust and vomit was somehow wonderful.

...the face I wore at work, my death mask.

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

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.

The idea that my brains could be untangled, straightened out, and thus refashioned into a state of peace and sanity was a comforting fantasy. I often felt there was something wired weird in my brain. [...] I was dark, you might say. Moony. But I don't think I was really so hardhearted by nature. Had I been born into a different family, I might have grown up to act and feel perfectly normal.

My father had warned when I'd started there at age twenty-one, naive beyond reproach, that the most dangerous individuals in a prison are not the criminals but the very people who work there. I can confirm this to be true. Those were perhaps the wisest words my father ever told me.

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.

Knowledge of anything current or faddish made me feel I was just a victim of isolation.

Life itself was like a book borrowed from a library, something that didn't belong to me and was due to expire.

Idealism without consequences is the pathetic dream of every spoiled brat.

The heart is a moody, greedy thing,

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

I’m like a beautiful tortoise. I don’t waste my energy. Life is precious to me now.

I can't say what I was looking for exactly, though I was ever hopeful that he might come out and profess his love, save me, run away with me, solve all my problems.

I felt I'd walked into a scene from a movie in which someone was going mad, the air heavy with suspense.

She awoke in my heart some long-sleeping dragon.

Love can be like that. It can vanish in an instant. It’s happened since, too. A lover has left the warm rapture of my bed to get a glass of water and returned only to find me cold, uninterested, empty, a stranger. Love can reappear, too, but never again unscathed. The second round is inevitably accompanied by doubt, intention, self-disgust. But that is neither here nor there.

God is a made-up story,” our mother told us, “like Santa Claus. There is nobody watching you when you’re alone. You decide for yourself what’s right and wrong. There are no prizes for good little girls. If you want something, fight for it. Don’t be a fool.

And unless you’ve grown up in New England, you don’t know the peculiar stillness of a coastal town covered in snow at night. It is not like in other places. The light does something funny at sunset. It seems not to wane but to recede out toward the ocean. The light just gets pulled away. I’ll

I wanted something to tell me my future was bright. I can imagine myself saying at the time that life itself was like a book borrowed from the library―something that did not belong to me and was due to expire. How silly.

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.

Eso de Dios es un cuento inventado —nos dijo nuestra madre—, igual que Santa Claus. No hay nadie mirándote cuando estás solo. Tú decides lo que está bien y lo que está mal. No hay ningún premio para las chicas buenas. Si quieres algo, lucha por ello.

I decided I would only pretend to believe in God since that seemed just as good as real faith, which I didn’t have.

The dark, icy night sparkled behind her, the snow and stars a galaxy of hope and wonder with her at its center. She was so alive and lovely.

A friend is someone who helps you hide the body—that

It’s a romantic story and it may not be accurate at this point since I’ve gone over it again and again for years whenever I’ve felt it necessary or useful to cry. Looking

I had hard feelings around the holidays, the one time of year I couldn’t help but fall prey to the canned self-pity Christmas prescribes.

This is the story of how I disappeared.

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

I’ve heard a sip of gin will make you immune to mosquitoes and other pests.

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.

I desperately hoped I could avoid ever having to resemble a grown woman. I didn’t see that any good could come of that.

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.

I searched for something in his face, anything his mask of contentment might betray, but there was nothing. He was a genius in that sense-a master. His was the best mask I'd ever seen.

I was a shoplifter, a pervert, you might say, and a liar, of course, but nobody knew that. I would enforce the rules all the more, for didn’t that prove that I lived by a high moral code?

I expected them (men) to see my drunken wordiness as a kind of coy gesture, as though I were saying, “I’m just a child, innocent to my own foolishness. Aren’t I cute? Love me and I’ll turn a blind eye to your faults.” With those other men, this tactic earned me brief sessions of affection until I became soured and saw that I had defiled myself by appealing to them in the first place.

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.

Any function of the body that one hid behind closed doors titillated me. I recall one of my early relationships—not a heavy love affair, just a light one—was with a Russian man with a wonderful sense of humor who permitted me to squeeze the pus from his pimples on his back and shoulders. To me, this was the greatest intimacy.

That was how I imagined my anatomy back then, brain like tangled yarn, body like an empty vessel, private parts like some strange foreign country. But I was careful shutting the door, of course. I didn’t really want to die.

I recall waking up to two shiny nickels under my pillow once. What shocked me was not the transformation from tooth to silver, but the idea that I had slept through the disturbance of my mother or father sneaking in during the night, that I had been unconscious, completely unaware, vulnerable. I remember my question that morning—what else had they done to me in my sleep? I’ve often wondered about everything I may have slept through, what arguments, what secrets.

My death mask didn't seem to perturb her at all. It always peeved me when my flatness was met with good cheer, good manners. Didn't she know I was a monster, a creep, a crone? How dare she mock me with courtesy when I deserved to be treated with disgust and dismay?

I will say this about houses. Those perfect, neat colonials I'd passed earlier that evening on my way through X-ville are the death masks of normal people. Nobody is really so orderly, so perfect. To have a house like that says more about what's wrong with you than any decrepit dump. Those people with perfect houses are simply obsessed with death. A house that is so well maintained, furnished with good-looking furniture of high quality, decorated tastefully, everything in its place, becomes a living tomb. People truly engaged in life have messy houses.

As one might guess, I was easily roused by the grosser habits of the human body--toilet business not least of all. The very fact that other people moved their bowels filled me with awe. Any function of the body that one hid behind closed doors titillated me. I recall one of my early relationships--not a heavy love affair, just a light one--was with a Russian man with a wonderful sense of humor who permitted me to squeeze the pus from his pimples on his back and shoulders. To me, this was the greatest intimacy. Before that, still young and neurotic, just allowing a man to listen to me urinate was utter humiliation, torture, and therefore, I thought, proof of profound love and trust

Of course his drinking put a strain on me as a young person. It made me very tense and edgy. That happens when one lives with an alcoholic. My story in this sense is not unique. 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. Now I live alone. Happily. Gleefully, even. I’m too old to concern myself with other people’s affairs. And I no longer waste my time thinking ahead into the future, worrying about things that haven’t happened yet. But I worried all the time when I was young, not least of all about my future, and mostly with respect to my father—how long he had left to live, what he might do, what I would find when I got home from work each evening.