Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes

Rejection, I have found, can be the only antidote to delusion

I did crave attention, but I refused to humiliate myself by asking for it.

Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness.

it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn’t.

The notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn't exist yet.

For a moment I felt joyful, and then I felt completely exhausted.

People truly engaged in life have messy houses.

I was both relieved and irritated when Reva showed up, the way you'd feel if someone interrupted you in the middle of suicide.

It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world. But I think I was also holding on to the loss, to the emptiness of the house itself, as though to affirm that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn’t.

Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart—this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then—that when I'd slept enough, I'd be okay. I'd be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation.

in my frenzied state of despair, I understood: there was stability in living in the past.

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.

Sometimes I feel dead," I told her, "and I hate everybody.

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

Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another.

It was lunacy, this idea, that I could sleep myself into a new life. Preposterous. But there I was, approaching the depths of my journey

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

We don’t forget things, OK? We just choose to ignore them. Can you accept responsibility for your memory lapse and move on?

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.

Education is directly proportional to anxiety, as you've probably learned, having gone to Columbia.

Only the coffee made my heart work a bit harder. Caffeine was my exercise.

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

I had no big plan to become a curator, no great scheme to work my way up a ladder. I was just trying to pass the time. I thought if I did normal things - held down a job, for example - I could starve off the part of me that hated everything.

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.

I counted the seconds passing. Time could go on forever like this, I thought again. Time would. Infinity loomed consistently and all at once, forever, with or without me. Amen.

And anyway, there is no comfort here on Earth. There is pretending, there are words, but there is no peace. Nothing is good here. Nothing. Every place you go on Earth, there is more nonsense.

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.

Nothing seemed really real. Sleeping, waking, it all collided into one gray, monotonous plane ride through the clouds. I didn't talk to myself in my head. There wasn't much to say. This was how I knew the sleep was having an effect: I was growing less and less attached to life. If I kept going, I thought, I'd disappear completely, then reappear in some new form. This was my hope. This was my dream.

People would be so much more at ease if they acted on impulse rather than reason. That’s why drugs are so effective in curing mental illness—because they impair our judgment. Don’t try to think too much.

Reva often spoke about 'settling down.' That sounded like death to me. 'I'd rather be alone than anybody's live-in prostitute,' I said to Reva.

The speed of time varied, fast or slow, depending on the depth of my sleep. My favorite days were the ones that barely registered.

The world was out there still, but I hadn’t looked at it in months. It was too much to consider in 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.

I felt myself float up and away, higher and higher into the ether until my body was just an anecdote, a symbol, a portrait hanging in another world.

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

If you want something and can't have it, want something else. Want what you deserve. You'll probably get it.

What about heaven, Ina? Don’t you want to go?’ ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘I won’t know anyone.

that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.

Mirth,” Dr. Tuttle said. “I like it better than joy. Happiness isn’t a word I like to use in here. It’s very arresting, happiness.

On September 11, I went out and bought a new TV/VCR at Best Buy so I could record the news coverage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. Trevor was on a honeymoon in Barbados, I'd later learn, but Reva was lost. Reva was gone. I watched the videotape over and over to soothe myself that day. And I continue to watch it, usually on a lonely afternoon, or any other time I doubt that life is worth living, or when I need courage, or when I am bored. Each time I see the woman leap off the seventy-eighth floor of the North Tower—one high-heeled shoe slipping off and hovering up over her, the other stuck on her foot as though it were too small, her blouse untucked, hair flailing, limbs stiff as she plummets down, one arm raised, like a dive into a summer lake—I am overcome by awe, not because she looks like Reva, and I think it's her, almost exactly her, and not because Reva and I had been friends, or because I'll never see her again, but because she is beautiful. There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.

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.

There was majesty and grace in the pace of the swaying branches of the willows. There was kindness. Pain is not the only touchstone for growth, I said to myself. My sleep had worked. I was soft and calm and felt things. This was good. This was my life now.

I could plan to do something and then find myself doing the opposite.

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

The notion of my future suddenly snapped into focus: it didn't exist yet. I was making it, standing there, breathing, fixing the air around my body with stillness, trying to capture something—a thought, I guess—as though such a thing were possible, as though I believed in the delusion described in those paintings—that time could be contained, held captive.

I felt I needed to hide a little. My mind needed a smaller world to roam.

I wanted to hold onto the house the way you'd hold onto a love letter. It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in the world. But I think I was also holding on to the loss, to the emptiness of the house itself, as though to affirm that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn't.

I hated them for not worshiping me. Had they no idea of my sacrifice? There I was, perfectly wonderful, and nobody would see that.

I rebelled in silent ways, with my thoughts.

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

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

I can't point to any one event that resulted in my decision to go into hibernation. Initially, I just wanted some downers to drown out my thoughts and judgments, since the constant barrage made it hard not to hate everyone and everything. I thought life would be more tolerable if my brain were slower to condemn the world around me.

When God gives you more than you can tolerate, you turn to instinct. And instinct is a force beyond anyone’s control.

Life was repetitive, resonated at a low hum.

I guess I have a lot of emotion stored up. But it's nothing bad. It's love. It's just love rotting up inside of me . . . That's it . . . I have too much love, I think, and nobody to give it to.

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

I thought that if I did normal things—held down a job, for example—I could starve off the part of me that hated everything. If I had been a man, I may have turned to a life of crime.

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

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

I wasn't an insomniac, but I was miserable.

How did people go on with their lives as though death weren't all around them?

When she asked the birds what to do, they answered that they didn't know anything about love, that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.

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

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

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. I was still stuck on that bit of vanity. But I was determined to sleep it away.

I feel very, very alone." "We're all alone, Reva," I told her. It was true: I was, she was. This was the maximum comfort I could offer.

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.

I am interested in disgust.

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.

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.

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.

I am overcome by awe, not because she looks like Reva, and I think it’s her, almost exactly her, and not because Reva and I had been friends, or because I’ll never see her again, but because she is beautiful. There she is, a human being, diving into the unknown, and she is wide awake.

I loved Reva, but I didn't like her anymore. We'd been friends since college, long enough that all we had left in common was our history together, a complex circuit of resentment, memory, jealousy, denial, and a few dresses I'd let Reva borrow, which she'd promised to dry clean and return but never did.

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

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

I took a Polaroid of her one night and stuck it into the frame of the mirror in the living room. Reva thought it was a loving gesture, but the photo was really meant as a reminder of how little I enjoyed her company if I felt like calling her later while I was under the influence.

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

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.

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.

I rarely interacted much with anyone back then who wasn't retarded. When I did, it struck me how pompous and impatient they were, always measuring their words, twisting things around. Everybody was so obsessed with being understood. It made me sick.

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.

The art world had turned out to be like the stock market, a reflection of political trends and the persuasions of capitalism, fueled by greed and gossip and cocaine.

I hated my boyfriend but I liked the neighborhood.

This was the beauty of sleep—reality detached itself and appeared in my mind as casually as a movie or a dream.

Your problem is that you're passive. You wait around for things to change, and they never will.

My brain hurts and I cry all the time. I don't want to be here on Earth for one moment longer.

I always called back to cancel, which I hated doing because I hated talking to people.

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.

OH, SLEEP. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness. I was not a narcoleptic—I never fell asleep when I didn’t want to. I was more

Life was persistent. There it was, every day. Each morning it woke me up. It was loud and brash. A bully. A lounge singer in a garish sequin dress. A runaway truck. A jackhammer. A brush fire. A canker sore. Death was different. It was tender, a mystery.

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

There is nothing more heartbreaking than a squandered opportunity, a missed chance. I knew about stuff like that. I'd been young once. So many dreams had been dashed. But I dashed them myself. I wanted to be safe, whole, have a future of certainty. One makes mistakes when there is confusion between having a future at all and having the future one wants.

I could feel the certainty of a reality leeching out of me like calcium from a bone. I was starving my mind into obliqueness. I felt less and less. Words came and I spoke them in my head, then nestled in on the sound of them, got lost in the music.

On a good day, every small thing is enchanting. Everything is a miracle. There is no emptiness. There is no need for forgiveness or escape or medicine. I hear only the wind in the trees, and my devils hatching their sacral plans, fusing all the shattered pieces together into a blanket of ice. I have found that it's under that ice that I can feel I am just another normal person. In the dark and cold, I am at 'peace.

Walter and I had shared a mind, of course. Couples get that way. I think it has something to do with sharing a bed. The mind, untethered during sleep, travels up and away, dancing, sometimes in partners. Things pass back and forth in dreams.

Someone said once that pupils were just empty space, black holes, twin caves of infinite nothingness. "When something disappears, that's usually where it disappears - into the black holes in our eyes." I couldn't remember who had said it. I watched my reflection disappear in the steam.

Reva was like the pills I took. They turned everything, even hatred, even love, into fluff I could bat away. And that was exactly what I wanted—my emotions passing like headlights that shine softly through a window, sweep past me, illuminate something vaguely familiar, then fade and leave me in the dark again.

But coming out of that sleep was excruciating. My entire life flashed before my eyes in the worst way possible, my mind refilling itself with all my lame memories, every little thing that had brought me to where I was. I'd try to remember something else—a better version, a happy story, maybe, or just an equally lame but different life that would at least be refreshing in its digressions—but it never worked. I was always still me. Sometimes I woke up with my face wet with tears. The only times I cried, in fact, were when I was pulled out of that nothingness, when the alarm on my cell phone went off.

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.

Pondering all this down in Reva's black room under her sad, pilly sheets, I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn't bring them up in me. 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. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system - a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love?

Mind over matter, people say. But what is matter, anyway? When you look at it under a microscope, it's just tiny bits of stuff. Atomic particles. Sub-atomic particles. Look deeper and deeper and eventually you'll find nothing. 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. We could walk through walls if we put our minds to it, people say. What they don't mention is that walking through a wall would most likely kill you. Don't forget that.