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Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis Quotes

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Famous Bret Easton Ellis Quotes

“…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. It is hard for me to make sense on any given level. Myself is fabricated, an aberration. I am a noncontingent human being. My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago (probably at Harvard) if they ever did exist. 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. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed. Yet I am blameless. Each model of human behavior must be assumed to have some validity. Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? 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—and I have countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing….”

American PsychoEllis
Book:American Psycho
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“ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Piece and Piece and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tells the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, "Be My Baby" on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so.”

American PsychoBret Easton EllisBlood Red Lettering
Book:American Psycho
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“Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire -- meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathizing, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt any more. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in...this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged...”

SatireAmerican PsychoBret Easton Ellis
Author:Bret Easton Ellis
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“What do you think I do?” And frisky too. “A model?” She shrugs. “An actor?” “No,” I say. “Flattering, but no.” “Well?” “I’m into, oh, murders and executions mostly. It depends.” I shrug. “Do you like it?” she asks, unfazed. “Um… It depends. Why?” I take a bit of sorbet. “Well, most guys I know who work in mergers and acquisitions don’t really like it,” she says. “That’s not what I said,” I say, adding a forced smiled, finishing my J&B. “Oh, forget it.”

American PsychoPatrick Bateman
Book:American Psycho
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“It wasn't until the show was almost over that I figured out what it was: the crack above my David Onica that I had asked the doorman to tell the superintendent to fix. On my way out this morning, I stopped at the front desk, about to complain to the doorman, when I was confronted with a NEW doorman, my age but balding and homely and FAT. Three glazed jelly doughnuts AND two steaming cups of extra-dark HOT CHOCOLATE lay on the desk in front of him beside a copy of the Post opened to the comics and it struck me that I was infinitely better-looking, more successful and richer than this poor bastard would ever be and so with a passing rush of sympathy I smiled and nodded a curt though not impolite good morning without lodging a complaint.”

SuperficialityAmerican Psycho
Book:American Psycho
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“On The Patty Winters Show this morning the topic was Toddler- Murderers. In the studio audience were parents of children who'd been kidnapped, tortured and murdered, while on stage a panel of psychiatrists and pediatricians were trying to help them cope - somewhat futilely I might add, and much to my delight - with their confusion and anger. But what really cracked me up was - via satellite on a lone TV monitor - three convicted Toddler-Murderers on death row who due to fairly complicated legal loopholes were now seeking parole and would probably get it.”

American PsychoThe Patty Winters Show
Book:American Psycho
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“The Patty Winters Show I taped this morning hasn't been watched yet. It's sixty minutes about women who've had mastectomies, which at seven-thirty, over breakfast, before the office, I couldn't bear to sit through, but after today - hanging out at the office, where the air-conditioning broke down, a tedious lunch with Cunningham at Odeon, my fucking Chinese cleaners unable to get bloodstains out of another Soprani jacket, four videotapes overdue that ended up costing me a fortune, a twenty-minute wait at the Stairmasters - I've adapted; these events have toughened me and I'm prepared to deal with this particular topic.”

American PsychoThe Patty Winters Show
Book:American Psycho
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