321 Quotes by Ottessa Moshfegh

It was lunacy, this idea, that I could sleep myself into a new life. Preposterous. But there I was, approaching the depths of my journey.

My little world of exhaust and vomit was somehow wonderful.

Let them all go bald and burn in hell.

He liked to buy his vegetables at a discount, too, usually off the sale rack in the supermarket. He’d been doing it for so long that the very sight of that neon orange discount sticker could make his mouth water. He.

On a good day, every small thing is enchanting. Everything is a miracle. There is no emptiness. There is no need for forgiveness or escape or medicine. I hear only the wind in the trees, and my devils hatching their sacral plans, fusing all the shattered pieces together into a blanket of ice. I have found that it’s under that ice that I can feel I am just another normal person. In the dark and cold, I am at ’peace.

Sleep felt productive. Something was getting sorted out. I knew in my heart – this was, perhaps, the only thing my heart knew back then – that when I’d slept enough, I’d be okay. I’d be renewed, reborn. I would be a whole new person, every one of my cells regenerated enough times that the old cells were just distant, foggy memories. My past life would be but a dream, and I could start over without regrets, bolstered by the bliss and serenity that I would have accumulated in my year of rest and relaxation.

Love can be like that. It can vanish in an instant. It’s happened since, too. A lover has left the warm rapture of my bed to get a glass of water and returned only to find me cold, uninterested, empty, a stranger. Love can reappear, too, but never again unscathed. The second round is inevitably accompanied by doubt, intention, self-disgust. But that is neither here nor there.

I’ve lived with many alcoholic men over the years, and each has taught me that it is useless to worry, fruitless to ask why, suicide to try to help them. They are who they are for better and worse.

I’d been stupid to believe that employment would add value to my life.