Sometimes I think I'm a nihilist because it doesn't matter, none of this matters. We're all following the will of some unknowable higher power, probably the stars manipulating our cellular magnets. We think we have all this agency, but do we? Do we really? Can you choose to be brave when you were born a coward? Can we be deprogrammed from the brainwashing that we grew up in? I think we can, but I think we need a lot of help.
Ottessa MoshfeghSometimes I think I'm a nihilist because it doesn't matter, none of this matters. We're all following the will of some unknowable higher power, probably the stars manipulating our cellular magnets. We think we have all this agency, but do we? Do we really? Can you choose to be brave when you were born a coward? Can we be deprogrammed from the brainwashing that we grew up in? I think we can, but I think we need a lot of help.
Ottessa MoshfeghI hope that I'm the kind of person who would step in between somebody holding a gun at somebody else. I would like to be that stupid. I'd like to be that in love with life.
Ottessa MoshfeghI don't like talking too much about my personal life, but it all goes into my work.
Ottessa MoshfeghYou know that's why people don't like unlikeable characters. It's not that they're not interesting. Everybody knows the most interesting character in a book or a movie or whatever narrative is the villain.
Ottessa MoshfeghI live in East Hollywood which is sort of the end of the grit, butting up against Silverlake and Los Feliz which are the refined gentrified hipster zones, which I tend to appreciate when I need to get coffee, but I like living in the grit. I like feeling separate from that elitist civilization in some way, even though I don't really "belong" in the grit either. But I do spend more than half my time now in the desert which is really nice - to be off the grid, remembering that the world is bigger than the city streets.
Ottessa MoshfeghIndifference 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.
Ottessa Moshfegh