Bret Easton Ellis Podcast Quotes

You've got to be really dialed into exactly who you are to the one hundredth power or you're just everyone else ~ Kanye West

You are a fucking ugly bitch I want to stab to death and play around with your blood, but I'm smiling. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

My pain is constant and sharp ... this confession has meant nothing ~ Bret Easton Ellis

How can I tell McDermott that this is a very disjointed time of my life and that I notice the walls have been painted a bright, almost painful white and under the glare of the fluorescent lights they seem to pulse and glow. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

If you start looking at movies on a moral level - "I don't like that, that hurts, that's mean, that's bad" - then I don't even want to talk to you. Or like, someone that says "I don't like science-fiction movies," or "I don't want to sit through a Western," or "I don't like violence in movies," then I completely tune out. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

You do not write a novel for praise, or thinking of your audience. You write for yourself; you work out between you and your pen the things that intrigue you ~ Bret Easton Ellis

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? ~ Bret Easton Ellis

He wasn't, I realized when I read those scenes concerning Blair and myself, close to any of us
except of course to Blair, and really not even to her. 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. But there was no point in being angry with him. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

History is sinking and only a very few seem dimly aware that things are getting bad. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

This is not an exit. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Everything suddenly seems displaced, subtle gradations erase borders, but it's more forceful than that. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

A vast and abandoned world laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Don't tell me he was another serial killer, Bateman. Not another serial killer." "No, McDufus, he wasn't a serial killer, ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I'm really shocked when critics get morally outraged at my fiction because they think I'm condoning what's going on. I never come in as the author and say, "Hey, okay. I'm interrupting the narrator here. I'm Bret Easton Ellis, and I'm the author." ~ Bret Easton Ellis

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

My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Later, as she's putting the dress back on, I notice a bruise on the side of her torso that I had'nt seen before.
"Who did that to you" I ask.
"Oh that" She says? "You did ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Sometimes I would take Nietzsche or something. And I wouldn't read it, but more just scan the words. Sometimes I would get whatever the popular thing at the time was. I don't know, something like Bret Easton Ellis. It was just a very random, inefficient education. ~ John Brandon

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. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Why do I sense hostility on your part, Patrick?" she asks softly, then sips her wine.
"Maybe because I'm hostile," I spit out. "Maybe because you sense this. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Are you as much of a criminal if you don't act when there's a crime taking place in front of you as you are one of the participants? That was something that I was thinking about a lot because there are many moments in 'Less Than Zero' where horrific things happen and Clay could do something about them, but his passivity stops him. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

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. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I think Bret Easton Ellis has said that he doesn't completely identify with his characters. And I think he has referred to them as immoral before. ~ Tao Lin

There's a moment of sheer terror when I discover Paul's apartment overlooks the park ~ Bret Easton Ellis

To me she looks like a big black ant - a big black ant in an original Christian Lacroix - eating a urinal cake and I almost start laughing, but I also want to keep her at ease. I don't want her to get second thoughts about finishing the urinal cake. But she can't eat any more and with only two bites taken, pretending to be full, she pushes the tainted plate away, and at this moment I start feeling strange. Even though I marveled at her eating that thing, it also makes me sad and suddenly I'm reminded that no matter how satisfying it was to see Evelyn eating something I, and countless others, had pissed on, in the end the displeasure it caused her was at my expense - it's an anticlimax, a futile excuse to put up with her for three hours. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Why not?" she asks petulantly. "Give me one good reason we shouldn't." "Because trying to fuck you is like trying to French-kiss a very ... small and ... lively gerbil?" I tell her. "I don't know." "Yes?" she says. "And?" "With braces?" I finish, shrugging. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

How is your father?" she asks disinterestedly.
"A contrivance," I mutter. "A plot device. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

On The Patty Winters Show this morning a Cheerio sat in a very small chair and was interviewed for close to an hour. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

J&B I am thinking. Glass of J&B in my right hand I am thinking. Hand I am thinking. Charivari. Shirt from Charivari. Fusilli I am thinking. Jami Gertz I am thinking. I would like to fuck Jami Gertz I am thinking. Porsche 911. A sharpei I am thinking. I would like to own a sharpei. I am twenty-six years old I am thinking. I will be twenty-seven next year. A Valium. I would like a Valium. No, two Valium I am thinking. Cellular phone I am thinking. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone, in fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself; no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

At first she was so inexpressive and indifferent that I wanted to know more about her. I envied that blankness - it was the opposite of helplessness or damage or craving or suffering or shame. But she was never really happy and already, in a matter of days, she had reached a stage in our relationship where she no longer really cared about me or any thoughts or ideas I might have had. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Suddenly I'm seized by a minor anxiety attack. There are too many fucking movies to choose from. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Fear never shows up and the party ends early. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

No I'm not," I whisper to myself. "I'm a fucking evil psychopath. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

And just as the table is about to finally ignore him, to look away and start eating, he sits up and loudly says, pointing an accusing finger at his plate, "It moved!" Timothy glares at him with a contempt so total that I can't fully equal it but I muster enough energy to come close. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Things
changing, failing apart, fading, another year, a few more
moves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom so
monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by
people you don't even know that it requires you to lose any
sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations
so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever
matching them. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

It was always the A booth. It was always the front seat of the roller coaster. It was never Let's not get the bottle of Cristal. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Greed is good. Sex is easy. Youth is forever. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Haven't we outgrown all this tired irony? Weren't we supposed to give up acting twenty-two forever? ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Descansado," he tells me.
"What does that mean?"
"Descansado," Rip says. "It means 'take it easy,'" he whispers, clutching the child next to him.
"Yeah?"
"It means relax. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

On the plane leaving Tokyo I'm sitting alone in back twisting the knobs on Etch-A-Sketch and Roger is next to me singing "Over the Rainbow" straight into my ear, things changing, falling apart, fading, another year, a few more moves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom so monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by people you don't even know that it requires you to lose any sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever matching them. Roger offers me a joint and I take a drag and stare out the window and I relax for a moment when the lights of Tokyo, which I never realized is an island, vanish from view but this feeling only lasts a moment because Roger is telling me that other lights in other cities, in other countries, on other planets, are coming into view soon. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

And though it has been in no way a romantic evening, she embraces me and this time emanates a warmth I'm not familiar with. I am so used to imagining everything happening the way it occurs in movies, visualizing things falling somehow into the shape of events on a screen, that I almost hear the swelling of an orchestra, can almost hallucinate the camera panning low around us, fireworks bursting in slow motion overhead, the seventy-millimeter image of her lips parting and the subsequent murmur of "I want you" in Dolby sound. But my embrace is frozen and I realize, at first distantly and they with greater clarity, that the havoc raging inside me is gradually subsiding and she is kissing me on the mouth and this jars me back into some kind of reality and I lightly push her away. She glances up at me fearfully.
"Listen, I've got to go," I say, checking my Rolex. "I don't want to miss… Stupid Pet Tricks. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

The director mentions the whispers about Clifton's sexual orientation, a supposed gig on a porn site years ago, a rumor about a very famous actor and a tryst in Santa Barbara and Clifton's denial in a Rolling Stone cover story about the very famous actor's new movie which Clifton had a small part in: 'We're so into girls it's ridiculous. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

...once you start choosing how people can and cannot express themselves then this opens the door to a very dark room in the corporation from which there's really no escape. Can't they in return police your thoughts, and then your feelings and then your impulses? And, finally, can they police, ultimately, your dream? ~ Bret Easton Ellis

It's the rare book that's able to transport you in a way that a movie does. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I laugh maniacally, then take a deep breath and touch my chest- expecting a heart to be thumping quickly, impatiently, but there's nothing there, not even a beat. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Who Dunnit?' profoundly expresses the theme of confusion against a funky groove, and what makes this song so exciting is that it ends with its narrator never finding anything out at all. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

This isn't a script," Julian says. "It's not going to add up. Not everything's going to come together in the third act. ~ Bret Easton Ellis