Ottessa Moshfegh Quotes

I've been singing since I was two. Music was my first passion and I love writing, singing, creating and being creative.

My mom is from Venezuela, and my dad is German and Japanese, and we lived in Brazil when I was a kid for a couple of years, and then I grew up on Long Island. I think all the traveling and all the nationalities put that stuff in my head. I was just around it a lot.

When the Berlin Wall came down, my dad left to visit the U.S. He met my mom at this summer camp where they were both working, so I grew up between Washington Heights and Germany speaking two languages.

I started out with piano when I was little. That, for songwriting, is my favorite instrument.

My dad was born in Haiti, and my mom was born in Tunisia. She is the daughter of a white French woman and a black, half-Guadeloupian, half-American man. My mom traveled the world a lot. She went through Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. She just got to experience a lot of different cultures, and that came through my childhood.

I'm first generation American, and my parents were both from Nigeria.

I have an affinity with Algeria, because I grew up with plenty of Algerian friends in the suburbs of Paris.

I've always loved writing, and my heritage has been interesting, growing up in a bi-cultural family. My mother being Vietnamese and my father being French, it's like an East-West meeting in my house.

Music is, of course, a universal emotional experience, cutting across cultures and languages. I studied piano for ten years as a child and consider that experience one of the most valuable in my life.

I remember when I was little, my mom asked me, 'Would you like to play the violin or the piano?' I looked at that giant monster and said to myself - I am not going to lock myself on that bench the whole day. This is small and lightweight. I can play from standing, sitting or walking.

I wish I'd gone to music school or just started playing in bands sooner.

I'm born and raised in Mexico. I only spent eight months in the States, but definitely English is a really big part of my life, and I love it. Thank God my mom put me in American school because I'm able to be working in the States, and it opens a lot more doors being half and not being only one. It's cool because I get to turn it on and off.

My father came from Germany. My mom came from Venezuela. My father's culturally German, but his father was Japanese. I was raised in New York and spent two years in Rio. My parents met at the University of Southern Mississippi, and they had me there, and then we moved to New York. I'm not very familiar with Mississippi.

I think my love of music comes from my dad. I was born with an ear for music, like him, and started with the piano when I was 4 but fell in love with the drums. My dad always has music playing.

I had a very strong interest in music, specifically the piano from a very small age.

All of my kids are into music. My older daughter plays guitar, piano, sings. My young son, he sings.

Music was something I found on my own. I got my first guitar when I was around 10, and it just all developed over time.

When I was growing up, Forest Park was full of integrated families. It was amazing. One my best friends was Vietnamese. Another one was half-Mexican, half-black. Another one was from Colombia. Another one was born in the U.S., but his mom was from Germany and spoke with a German accent. So we all had multiple identities.

Me being a black girl in London, whose mom is first-generation African and whose dad is West Indian, gives me a different view. I'm coming at soul from my own place.

I've always made music - pretty much since I was born.

I love to sing and play the piano. As a child, I've always loved to sing my heart out, and even my teachers encouraged me to take up singing.

I am an American citizen born in Kuwait of Egyptian parents. I grew up in Great Britain, Malaysia, and Egypt and have lived in the United States since 1965, when I was seventeen.

II grew up in Australia, but I'm not from there originally. Like, my dad's South American, so I know what that's like to grow up in a culture that's not your own.

My mother was born in Burma, but my grandfather on her side was Indian-Spanish. So I have this quite exotic mix, which is reflected in my earliest memories, in our Wiltshire country kitchen, of gran, and aunts, cooking spicy stewy, casseroley curries, a version of Indian food with a Burmese twist.

I'm probably the only kid in history whose parents made him stop taking music lessons. They made me stop studying the accordion.