“Distance is where people get really confused. If you stand really far away from someone you're like, "That's not me. I'm so far away from that person. That person is so different from me." It's easy to forget that people - refugees from Syria, for example - are exactly like us.” PeopleDifferentEasyForgetDistanceConfusedFar AwaySyriaRefugeeGet Real Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“Sometimes I think I'm a nihilist because it doesn't matter, none of this matters. We're all following the will of some unknowable higher power, probably the stars manipulating our cellular magnets. We think we have all this agency, but do we? Do we really? Can you choose to be brave when you were born a coward? Can we be deprogrammed from the brainwashing that we grew up in? I think we can, but I think we need a lot of help.” ThinkingSometimesHelpingBraveCowardYou ChooseBe BraveMagnetHigher PowerBrainwashingNihilist Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I hope that I'm the kind of person who would step in between somebody holding a gun at somebody else. I would like to be that stupid. I'd like to be that in love with life.” KindStupidGunLove Life Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I was feeling like I'd been born in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. I don't believe that anymore, not coincidentally two years after writing Eileen. I think that was the driving curiosity for me, thinking about real and fictional characters who could respond to that problem.” PeopleThinkingWritingBelieveRealCharacterFeelingsProblemCuriosityDrivingWrong TimeFictional Character Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“Building a relationship with the character. It's just like sitting with someone you know. It's very easy to predict when they're going to shake their head or say whatever, but because I'm the author I have to make characters do what I want them to do.” CharacterEasyBuilding Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“Anybody that I like that you talk to about me will probably agree that when I'm hanging out with someone one-on-one, I have a tendency to build this attitude toward the world outside of us, it's us and them. I'm with you here, and you're with me, and we are in the club and everybody else out there is in that shitty club. The positive is I make people feel really special, and I also make some people really uncomfortable and judged, and I'm working on that.” PeopleWorldAttitudeSpecialAgreeUncomfortableHanging OutJudged Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“For me, I enjoy intimidating people and I enjoy being intimidated. It is exciting. It's cool to have an experience with someone where you challenge them, and they are afraid, and then they love you and they've grown. When that happens to me, I feel so blessed if somebody has opened my world up a little bit more.” PeopleWorldEnjoyChallengesLove YouExcitingBlessedIntimidatingIntimidated Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“You know that's why people don't like unlikeable characters. It's not that they're not interesting. Everybody knows the most interesting character in a book or a movie or whatever narrative is the villain.” PeopleBookCharacterInterestingVillainMost Interesting Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I'm asking the reader to suspend reality with me and entertain the idea that the person writing is not me. In order to do that well, I think, one needs to point out the artifice of the narrative. Somehow if the narrator is self-aware then it's almost more humanizing and more relatable.” ThinkingWritingRealityRelatable Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I want to say that what is cool about writing self-aware first person narrative is that the awareness is not necessarily the same awareness of the reader. I have a story coming out in the Paris Review and it's about a hipster. He think's he's self-aware, he's very introspective and analytical, but when you're reading it you can totally see through his self-analysis because you have a higher awareness than he does. I like playing with that too.” WritingReadingAwarenessIntrospectiveHipster Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“The way that I see third person is it's actually first person. Writing for me is all voice work. Third person narrative is just as character-driven as first person narrative for me in terms of a voice. I don't write very much in third person.” WritingTerm Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I don't remember reading much at all during the writing of Eileen. I go through several years-long dry spells and I don't feel like reading at all. I was working part-time for a guy in Venice, California while I drafted Eileen. He wanted help in writing his memoir. The research had a lot to do with the 60s, so that must have informed my sense of the place and time in my novel, and perhaps even the memoir point-of-view. He was also from New England. It was a fun job. I learned a lot about motorcycle clubs, Charles Manson, hopping freight trains.” WritingHelpingRememberGuyReadingFunNovelTrainMemoirMotorcycleManson Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I prefer reading novels. Short stories are too much like daggers. And now that I'm done with my collection I'm more interested in different forms of writing and other kinds of narrative art. I'm working on a screenplay. But when I was working on Eileen, I definitely felt like I was taking a piss. Like, here I am, typing on my computer, writing the "novel." It wasn't that it was insincere, but there was a kind of farcical feeling I had when I was writing.” WritingKindArtDifferentDoneFeelingsReadingNovelComputerShort StoryTypingInsincere Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I had to brainwash myself, like what I was doing was going to be really, really good, and then just accept whatever happened.” Accepting Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“My short stories are so character-based and they're also so private. They're like a private world in each story and I'm getting more and more interested in allowing myself to investigate the big picture about this country, and about human beings, and about the planet, and about the solar system, and about the nature of the material world in general. And I felt like I needed to move into a bigger form.” WorldCountryMovingShort StoryBig PictureSolar System Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
