Ottessa Moshfegh

The heart is a moody, greedy thing, I suppose.

we could go out to the frozen lake and stand and shoot at the moon. Or to the beach, lie on our backs, make angels in the snow, shoot at the stars. Such were my romantic ideas for the evening with my new best friend

amazing what the mind will do when the heart is throbbing

Why should my heart ache for anyone but myself? If anyone was trapped and suffering and abused, it was me. I was the only one whose pain was real. Mine.

On the contrary, being kidnapped was something of a secret wish of mine. At least then I’d know that I mattered to someone, that I was of value. Violence made much more sense to me than any strained conversation.

The time I languished in the agony of not being beautiful was more than I care to admit even now

Before that, still young and neurotic, just allowing a man to listen to me urinate was utter humiliation, torture, and therefore, I thought, proof of profound love and trust.

A grown woman is like a coyote—she can get by on very little. Men are more like house cats. Leave them alone for too long and they’ll die of sadness.

Of course, the rule wasn’t there to protect children from handkerchiefs. I knew what I’d said just wasn’t true. But I was young enough, and had been enslaved enough by my public school education and my father and his Catholicism, and was frightened enough of being punished or questioned or singled out, that I obeyed every rule there was at Moorehead. I followed
every procedure. I clocked in and out every day on time.

I was a shoplifter, a pervert, you might say, and a liar, of course, but nobody knew that. I would enforce the rules all the more, for didn’t that prove that I lived by a high moral code? That I was good?