Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes

I think everyone has their awkward phases. Growing up isn't easy for everyone.

I was a shy kid, a late bloomer. At 22, I was probably 16 emotionally.

Going through puberty as a young girl is so confusing. This monster invades your body, changes things and makes things grow, and no one tells you what's going on.

I think everyone has their awkward phases. Growing up isn't easy for everyone. I definitely had my awkward moments.

Puberty is an extremely traumatic process even if you don't realize it. It kind of lives with you for like 10 years.

Adolescence isn't just about prom or wearing sparkly dresses.

High school was a complicated, confusing time for me. I wasn't confident, didn't know who I was, and was hiding from myself a lot.

I'm a young woman, and I'm growing up and trying to do it in a way I feel comfortable with.

I feel like we're always learning about ourselves, but at twelve, you're learning big things that shape your identity.

When you're teenager, your hormones and your emotions are so tumultuous and so unpredictable. You're just trying to understand yourself.

It seems that one moment I was this little kid only caring about animals and flowers and stuff, and then the next minute I was this raging stew of hormones. I don't know if you've ever been a raging stew of anything, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it.

I suppose that when you're growing up, you're bound to reach an age when you feel buffeted by all the changes in your life, when either your mind begins outpacing your body or your body begins outpacing your mind and you're not quite in conversation with yourself anymore.

Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.

I'm always thinking about identity. And the middle-school years are a time of exploring questions about who you are and who you want to be. For the first time, you see the world in a broader sense.

High school is just horrible in general. So, I think it was a good time for me to have stopped acting. I got to be normal in high school.

I had a tough time fitting in, as I guess most kids do. I felt like school was kind of a grand opportunity to figure yourself out and to figure out what you wanted.

No matter where you are or where you grow up, you always go through the same awkward moments of being a teenager and growing up and trying to figure out who you are.

In middle school, we are all so damn insecure. It was the worst time for me, really destructive, like slapping myself across the face but loving it. Now I have to be an adult and change myself. I have to be a bigger person.

Young kids don't have their identity, so everything is so important. Now I'm mature. I know who I am and I know what my thing is and I know what I'm bringing. It's very clear and defined.

I think high school's very difficult. You're figuring out your own power and your effect on other people. You look back and see how you spent so much energy on figuring out things with your parents or your peers.

There came a moment in my life when I realized that I had stepped into another part of my life. I used to walk into a room full of people and think, do they like me? And one day I walk in and I thought, do I like them?

I never felt like someone who was boyish and coming to terms with asking girls out or anything like that, which was what 'The Big Steal' and 'Spotswood' were about. But I guess that's the impression I left on people.

I just wanted to do something about the teenage experience; it's such a wonderful and horrible time of life.

I have a 15-year-old daughter who thinks that I always had this self confidence that I have now at the age of 60. And I always tell her that what she is going through - the low self-esteem as a teenager - that is a right of passage.

I am sure that adolescents find it just as confusing and difficult to understand themselves as their elders find them difficult to understand.