“I've always really enjoyed sharing my work with others. I find it really hard if I don't think the work will exist outside of my own apartment.” IfsThinkingHardMy OwnEnjoyedApartment Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“Think about every time you've seen someone being objectified, abused, enslaved. We see it constantly on the TV, in magazines, on the Internet. We've become numb, so we do nothing. The accumulation of passivity might make reading about that exploitation uncomfortable. And sometimes when I'm writing, I think of it like this: "People seem to like garbage, so here is what garbage smells like..."” PeopleThinkingWritingSometimesSeemsMightReadingTvsInternetSmellMagazinesUncomfortableExploitationGarbageAccumulationNumbPassivity Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“The thing about California is that it's kind of a dream, and I started to feel like I was living in a dream. I still feel like that. Because of that I think I've been able to realize a lot of things that were just ideas. When I was living in New York City, it's such a rat race, it's so competitive and everything is so concrete and in your face all the time. If you're like, "I'm gonna be a writer!" Everybody's like, "Yeah, you and all the other assholes on the subway." There isn't a lot of space for the detached, free-floating movement of the imagination.” ThinkingKindDreamRealizingImaginationYour FaceConcreteRat Race Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“Reality is a projection of consciousness, so if you believe - more than just think - but believe, subliminally, that something is true, it will become true because you will make micro-decisions based on the reality that you have faith in.” ThinkingBelieveRealityConsciousnessHave FaithIf You Believe Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“People have been asking me, "What advice do you have for young writers?" I tell them: a) get off social media; b) don't ask your friends what they think about your work or your ideas. You need to focus and be insane within yourself to build your sandcastle. The mind is so malleable and you need to have a steel trap around it, at least while you're working on something.” PeopleThinkingMindFocusAdviceSocial MediaInsane Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“There are a lot of smart people being really thoughtful and writing really interesting things, but that isn't what I want to do. It's never felt like what I've been called to do. And I have to risk sounding really arrogant when I say that because I've gone to Ivy League schools and been privileged in all these ways in the world of ideas, but I'm not as smart as you think. I'm not really depending on what I learned in college to write my books. Those were just parts of my life experience.” PeopleThinkingWorldWritingBookSchoolInterestingRiskCollegeSmartLeagueThoughtfulBeing RealLife ExperienceArrogantReally InterestingSmart People Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I've dedicated a lot of my life as a writer to understanding how to hear the divine voice, or the music of the spheres, or whatever it is that we do when we're making art, making something out of nothing. Figuring out how to do that is much more important than knowing how to execute a good line. I don't think about that anymore, I just write.” ThinkingWritingArtImportantUnderstandingDivineDedicated Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“In fiction the narrator is a performance of voice, and it can be any style of voice, but I'm interested in the ways that a voice that knows it's telling a story is actually telling a different story than it intends to. In the way that I can sit here and tell you what I had for breakfast, but I'm really telling you that I'm having an affair, something like that. And I don't think my writing is plain, but I think a lot of my characters are just talking. There is vulnerability there, in that we can start to see through them, we can start to see where they're deceiving themselves.” ThinkingWritingDifferentCharacterStyleAffairVulnerabilityDeceiving Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I think we waste a lot of time trying to convince other people that we're right. A lot of times we don't actually care what another person thinks, we just want to say what we think. To hear it reflected back to us and that we're okay, to hear that we have been understood and that we're correct - so that we can continue to be who we are in the ways we've been being, and we have nothing to feel bad about and everything is just fine. Even if what we're talking about is, like, police brutality.” PeopleThinkingTryingCareOkayPoliceConvincePolice Brutality Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“I don't think there's anything wrong with pity. Like if you saw a dog having just been hit by a car, you would pity that dog. But then what do you do? Do you leave it there to get run over by more cars, or do you step into traffic and hold up your hand? "Stop! An animal has been hit!" and carry the thing to safety?” ThinkingRunningAnimalDogCarSafetyPity Author:Ottessa Moshfegh
“Indifference is the saddest state of being. It's like PTSD - you're not gonna fight, you're not gonna run, you're just frozen there, feeling nothing. It's very easy to have conversations when you're sitting there feeling nothing, to talk about the weather or what you had for lunch, to Instagram what you had for lunch. We're all suffering from trauma. This world is so crazy. How do we feel safe here? I think that's the question everybody's asking, "What do I need to do to feel safe? Like I'm okay?" I don't think there's anything wrong with that.” ThinkingWorldFeelingsRunningSufferingFightingEasyCrazyOkayTraumaIndifference 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 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
“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
