Ottessa Moshfegh Quotations

I've always been interested in family secrets and what happens behind closed doors. I find that fascinating and creepy - that's why I read: because I want to know other people's secrets.

I've always known what I'm meant to do. The path of my life has been about discovering what I need to do to support myself as a writer.

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.

I've found that people get particularly frustrated and shut down when women in fiction are disgusting or disordered.

In my own experience, I've found that it's very difficult to make peace with women. We tend to be competitive and feel angry.

My dad is a gentle and brilliant Iranian violinist.

Once I finished 'Eileen,' I wanted to write more novels. I don't see myself stopping any time soon.

I don't care about being a literary personality - that doesn't appeal to me, especially because the literary world doesn't appeal to me. I actually don't feel like I even belong in it. If this was high school, I would be sitting with the Goths, looking at everyone, being like, 'Whatever.'

I'm a first - I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist. I was really interested in piano and sort of discovered that I was a writer when I was about 13 and started writing.

It's insane that people have these Internet identities. It has very little to do with who we really are. As a writer, who I'm friends with, how I spend my time, what I look like, what I wear, what I eat, what kind of music I like - it's totally not important to the work.

Puberty extends into your twenties, for sure, and some people don't get over that until much later in life. I feel like I'm just starting to get over puberty - basically twenty years of insufferable, totally self-obsessed hell.

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..."

If you look at the horror genre, that work is all about making people uncomfortable by stimulating our fear of death.

I don't like talking too much about my personal life, but it all goes into my work.

I was really interested in piano and sort of discovered that I was a writer when I was about 13 and started writing. And it was my secret thing and my passion.

I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist.

I love art because I feel that it's evidence of the great shared universal power. I like art that feels real, that cuts the bullshit.

What's inspiring me the most [is] injustice. My own growth as a member of the human race, in terms of the veils being lifted, seeing more of the beauty and also the horror. A sense of my own purpose in this life. Love...