Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes

With every character, the first thing I want to feel is empathy.

I don't judge my characters, and that's my job not to judge them. It's my job to treat them with respect and to just look at it from their point of view.

As a filmmaker, you are going to manipulate the character as you need to make the scenes work.

I don't judge my characters, and that's my job not to judge them.

The art of fiction is freedom of will for your characters.

As far as I'm concerned, the most important thing you need when inventing characters is empathy.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

To me, this is the singular privilege of reading literature: we are allowed to step into another's life.

If I'm practicing making up what the characters will do, it's never good. In fact, when I catch myself doing that, I try to get rid of that section, and try and let them start making the decisions.

With my writing, what I want to do is humanize the young people I write about.

Because characters are your creations, you are the one who ultimately gets to decide their fate.

Don't let your characters tell you what to do. They can be pushy. Some writers say that they create characters and then just sort of follow them around through the narrative. I think that these writers are out of their minds.

An author's characters do what he wants them to do.

Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.

Actually, I get a little say in what my character would or wouldn't do.

Many really good films allow us to empathize with other lives.

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

The strength of fiction is not in reading about yourself, but in reading about other people.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

I don't judge my characters.

I love that idea that if you know someone's story, it's impossible not to love them. This is potentially hokey but incredibly true, as far as I'm concerned.

As a storyteller, I've always been fascinated with the idea of recreating this notion of choices in fiction. My dream was to put the audience in the shoes of the main protagonists, let them make their own decisions, and by doing so, let them tell their own stories.

It is very touching that you are able to create some kind of impact through a character.

Acting requires a great amount of empathy for real lived human experiences.

I've found that the more honest and true you are and can talk about a character and people's experiences, it's less ostracizing. It actually has the opposite effect than one would think. It makes the characters and the story more inclusive.