Home / Quotes / Quote by Ottessa Moshfegh

Quote by Ottessa Moshfegh

“What you can't teach someone is how to find the door. You can't give someone a door to another universe. You can tell them that the door exists, and if they're stuck in the hallway you can be like, "You're stuck in the hallway," but you can't open the door for them.”

Quote by Ottessa Moshfegh

Author

Ottessa Moshfegh

Ottessa Moshfegh is a contemporary American author known for her unique narrative style and profound psychological insights. Her works often explore themes of loneliness, alienation, and moral dilemmas in modern society. more

You May Also Like

“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.”

People Thinking World Writing Book School Interesting Risk College Smart League Thoughtful Being Real Life Experience Arrogant Really Interesting Smart People

Author:Ottessa Moshfegh

“Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn't influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.”

Culture Influence Media Television Theory Rely Presidency Analysts Postman

Author:Val Kilmer

“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.”

Thinking Writing Art Important Understanding Divine Dedicated

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.”

Thinking Writing Different Character Style Affair Vulnerability Deceiving

Author:Ottessa Moshfegh

“I don't really pity any of my characters. I hold my characters under a harsh fluorescent lamp and ask "Who are you?" I'm not doing their makeup or giving them hairdos. They present themselves to me as they are and then I let them say what they want. Usually they're saying something too honest.”

Giving Character Honest Pity Makeup Harsh Want U

Author:Ottessa Moshfegh

“A lot of humanists treat religion as if it were simply a kind of rival cosmological hypothesis, and that this is all it is. My view is that to the extent that religions are cosmological hypotheses, this is not the only important thing about them, and we - atheists- will never get a proper understanding of what religion is if we focus too much on the cosmology.”

Kind Important Understanding Focus Cosmology

Author:Tim Crane

“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.”

People Thinking Trying Care Okay Police Convince Police Brutality

Author:Ottessa Moshfegh

“One odd thing about the current debate between religious people and atheists is that the participants don't seem to care that they entirely fail to communicate with the other side. They therefore have no account of why the religious or the atheists believe what they do, except that they are stupid or deluded. I think philosophers should try and make sense of their disputes with their opponents as far as possible without treating them as idiots. This applies to the religious participants in the debate as much as to the atheists.”

People Thinking Trying Believe Care Religious Failing Stupid Atheist Philosopher Communicate Debate Idiot Make Sense Odd

Author:Tim Crane

“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?”

Thinking Running Animal Dog Car Safety Pity

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.”

Thinking World Feelings Running Suffering Fighting Easy Crazy Okay Trauma Indifference

Author:Ottessa Moshfegh