Bret Easton Ellis Quotes

We buy balloons, we let them go.

I have to return some videotapes

The better you look, the more you see.

I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

I had all the characteristics of a human being—flesh, blood, skin, hair—but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that my normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

No one ever likes the right person.

'Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?' [...] '"When I see a pretty girl walking down the street I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her and be real nice and sweet and treat her right."' I stop finish my J&B in one swallow. 'What does the other part of him think?' Hamlin asks tentatively. 'What her head would look like on a stick...'

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?

I keep feeling that people are becoming less human and more animalistic. They seem to think less and feel less so that everyone is operating on a very primitive level. I wonder what you and I will see in our lifetimes. It seems so hopeless yet we must keep on trying ... I guess we can't escape being a product of the times, can we?

Why was I holding on to something that would never be mine? But isn't that what people do?

But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you.

Eventually everyone has to hit the dark side of life - Someone doesn't like you, someone doesn't like your work, someone doesn't love you back... people die. What we have is a generation who are super-confident and super-positive about things, but when the least bit of darkness enters their lives, they're paralyzed.

I like the idea of a writer being haunted by his own creation, especially if the writer resents the way the character defines him.

And as the elevator descents, passing the second floor, and the first floor, going even father down, I realize that the money doesn't matter. That all that does is that I want to see the worst

Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire - meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead.

Baby, when you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live. You know you did, you know you did, you know you did.

What does that mean know me, know me, nobody ever knows anybody else, ever! You will never know me.

The snowy owl has eyes that look just like mine, especially when it widens them. And while I stand there, staring at it, lowering my sunglasses, something unspoken passes between me and the bird - there's this weird kind of tension, a bizarre pressure, that fuels the following, which starts, happens, ends, very quickly.

Every book for me is an exorcism in some way or another, working through my feelings at the time.

A great numb feeling washes over me as I let go of the past and look forward to the future. Pretend to be a vampire. I don't really need to pretend, because it's who I am, an emotional vampire. I've just come to expect it. Vampires are real. That I was born this way. That I feed off of other people's real emotions. Search for this night's prey. Who will it be?

Disintegration---I'm taking it in stride.

The seeds of love have taken hold and if we won't burn together, I'll burn alone.

I want to moan and writhe with you and I want to go up to you and kiss your mouth and pull you to me and say "I love you I love you I love you" while stripping. I want you so bad it stings.

And it struck me then, that I liked Sean because he looked, well, slutty. A boy who had been around. A boy who couldn't remember if he was Catholic or not.

By the time you finish reading this sentence, a Boeing jetliner will take off or land somewhere in the world.

When the going gets tough, the tough go drinking.

All of my books come from pain.

Disappear Here. The syringe fills with blood. You're a beautiful boy and that's all that matters. Wonder if he's for sale. People are afraid to merge. To merge.

Greed is good. Sex is easy. Youth is forever.

Where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible.

I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is 'Disappear Here' and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.

Not being able to find meaning can be just as powerful as finding meaning.

...if you're alone nothing bad can happen to you.

My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone.

After a while you learn that everything stops.

She sits before me, sullen but hopeful, characterless, about to dissolve into tears. I squeeze her hand back, moved, no, touched by her ignorance of evil. She has one more test to pass. Do you own a briefcase?” I ask her, swallowing.

The seals stupidly dive off rocks into swirling black water, barking mindlessly. The zookeepers feed them dead fish. A crowd gathers around the tank, mostly adults, a few accompanied by children. On the seals' tank a plaque warns: COINS CAN KILL——IF SWALLOWED, COINS CAN LODGE IN AN ANIMAL'S STOMACH AND CAUSE ULCERS, INFECTIONS AND DEATH. DO NOT THROW COINS IN THE POOL. So what do I do? Toss a handful of change into the tank when none of the zookeepers are watching. It's not the seals I hate——it's the audience's enjoyment of them that bothers me.

He was simply someone who floated through our lives and didn't seem to care how flatly he perceived everyone or that he'd shared our secret failures with the world, showcasing the youthful indifference, the gleaming nihilism, glamorizing the horror of it all.

I feel I'm moving toward as well as away from something, and anything is possible.

...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.

You learn to move on without the people you love.

Why would I care what other people are thinking? I don't care what an audience thinks of me.

A child should never even think about being a "good son." A parent decides that fate for the child. The parent encourages that. Not the child himself. And the "perfect dad"? I shudder at thinking what that may be.

I think in life, there are certain choices you make that are timeless and universal, and don't necessarily have anything to do with the particulars of a certain decade.

Look how black the sky is, the writer said. I made it that way.

Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is a crock. Some people truly do not need to be here.

I went to college in Vermont, and then stayed in the East Coast.

I totally relate to Tom Cruise. He's not crazy, it's just the litany of the mid-life crisis.

I'm on the verge of tears by the time we arrive at Pastels since I'm positive we won't get seated but the table is good, and relief that is almost tidal in scope washes over me in an awesome wave.