321 Quotes by Ottessa Moshfegh

Tell me everything!” she’d cry, salivating. Poor Reva. She might actually have thought I was capable of sharing things. “Friends forever?” She’d want us to make some sacred pact. She always wanted to make pacts. “Let’s make a pact to have brunch at least twice a month. Let’s promise to go for a walk through Central Park every Saturday. Let’s have a daily call-time. Will you swear to take a ski trip this year? It burns so many calories.

I rarely interacted much with anyone back then who wasn’t retarded. When I did, it struck me how pompous and impatient they were, always measuring their words, twisting things around. Everybody was so obsessed with being understood. It made me sick.

Idealism without consequences is the pathetic dream of every spoiled brat, I suppose.

People died all the time. Why couldn’t I?

That’s fair,” I said, though my feelings were already hurt.

It was proof that I had not always been completely alone in this world. But I think I was also holding on to the loss, to the emptiness of the house itself, as though to affirm that it was better to be alone than to be stuck with people who were supposed to love you, yet couldn’t.

I know I don’t have any real wisdom. I don’t have any wonderful ideas. I am lucky to have found a few nice people here and there.

Maybe they understood, in fact, that beauty and meaning had nothing to do with one another.

It’s either this or that. Decide and move forward. You spend so much time playing in your mind, like a sandbox. Everything just slipping through your fingers, nothing solid to hold.