Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes

When I was eight years old, I wrote a paragraph-long short story about a goat on my mother's hundred-pound, black-and-white-screen laptop. The story came about largely because I liked the way the word 'goat' looked on the page, but I decided then and there that I wanted to be a writer. That desire never changed.

I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist.

Well, writing was what I wanted to do, it was always what I wanted to do. I had novels to write so I wrote them.

I didn't do any writing seriously until I was in my mid-twenties. But I've never really thought of myself as doing anything else. I've always wanted to write.

I'm not sure if I always wanted to be a writer, but I was always writing.

Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn't sure how to start.

The first thing you have to understand is that I was not desperate to be a writer. I was never a closet writer filing away notes in a cupboard.

I don't think there was a time I ever thought of myself as anything but a writer. I thought I was going to be the next Toni Morrison.

When I went to college I took a creative writing class and decided in a week to be a writer.

And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.

I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed.

I always knew I wanted to be a writer.

I love writing books - I really do. If I could just quit everything and work on a book every day, I would love that most.

I'm a compulsive storyteller, an avid reader, and have always nurtured the secret goal of spending my life as a writer.

I can't envisage stopping writing.

I never really knew I wanted to 'be' a writer, but I was always writing from a very young age. It became more conscious as an ideal when I was in my twenties.

I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

I was not going to use writing for advertising or journalism. I would tend bar, load trucks, chauffeur - do whatever it took. But from the moment I took my first writing workshop, I was a writer.

I always counsel aspiring novelists that passion is the most important quality for a writer to possess - technique can be taught, but that relentless desire to write has to come from within.

The first time I can remember thinking that I would like to be a writer came in sixth grade, when our teacher Mrs. Crandall gave us an extended period of time to write a long story. I loved doing it. I started working seriously at becoming a writer when I was seventeen.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age - 11 or 12 - but I don't think I ever thought I would write historical fiction. I never thought I might write academic history because I simply wasn't good enough!

I've been writing since I'm five years old. I've been writing books since high school - junior high, high school. I write every single day. I never thought I'd be published.