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Quote by Ottessa Moshfegh

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My Year of Rest and Relaxation

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Ottessa Moshfegh
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

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“SERVANT. Have mercy upon your servant, my queen! QUEEN. The assembly is over and my servants are all gone. Why do you come at this late hour? SERVANT. When you have finished with others, that is my time. I come to ask what remains for your last servant to do. QUEEN. What can you expect when it is too late? SERVANT. Make me the gardener of your flower garden. QUEEN. What folly is this? SERVANT. I will give up my other work. I will throw my swords and lances down in the dust. Do not send me to distant courts; do not bid me undertake new conquests. But make me the gardener of your flower garden. QUEEN. What will your duties be? SERVANT. The service of your idle days. I will keep fresh the grassy path where you walk in the morning, where your feet will be greeted with praise at every step by the flowers eager for death. I will swing you in a swing among the branches of the saptaparna, where the early evening moon will struggle to kiss your skirt through the leaves. I will replenish with scented oil the lamp that burns by your bedside, and decorate your footstool with sandal and saffron paste in wondrous designs. QUEEN. What will you have for your reward? SERVANT. To be allowed to hold your little fists like tender lotus-buds and slip flower chains over your wrists; to tinge the soles of your feet with the red juice of ashoka petals and kiss away the speck of dust that may chance to linger there. QUEEN. Your prayers are granted, my servant, you will be the gardener of my flower garden.”

“If this most holy Sacrament were celebrated in only one place and consecrated by only one priest in the whole world, with what great desire, do you think, would men be attracted to that place, to that priest of God, in order to witness the celebration of the divine Mysteries! But now there are many priests and Mass is offered in many places, that God's grace and love for men may appear the more clearly as the Sacred Communion is spread more widely through the world.”

“It was always the magic of those dense snowfalls that bedecked the landscape in a whitened splendor and rendered the horizon cloaked to invisibility in winter’s frosty veil. And in the rapture of such moments, you find yourself pressed beyond any and all means of resistance to hold onto anything except the majesty of the ascending moment. And being held a willing hostage, it takes but a moment of these moments to realize that everything around you has been swept up in just the same way, leaving you joined with the whole of creation that is both quieted in awe, but likewise raucous in praise. And I wonder (in some very remote way), if the first Christmas night might have been something like this.”

“It is at the name of Jesus, the Christ made man, that every knee is to bend in heaven. The overwhelming revelation made to the angels in the mystery of the Ascension is not that they are to adore the Eternal Word --- that is already the object of their liturgy; but rather, they are to adore the Word Incarnate --- and that overturns all of heaven, just as the Incarnation revolutionized all the earth.”

“She could only admire the breadth of his chest, each pectoral muscle clearly defined. Her palms itched to explore them, and she wanted to curl her fingers in the sprinkling of dark hair that narrowed over the flat plains of his belly. There was an indentation bisecting them that she ached to trace. The hair grew denser just below his navel, arrowing toward his low-slung drawers, half-opened now. She gasped when she saw it. The tip of him rose up, thick and pink, protruding over the top of the linen. The ache between her thighs increased, as if knowing he was meant to be inside her to assuage it. He saw her take notice and kept his arms up, fingers laced behind his head, as if basking in her study of him.”