You learn to move on without the people you love.

I've forgotten who I had lunch with earlier, and even more important, where.

You really write the books you want to write. You can't take into consideration anything that anybody has said about you in the past, or what they'll say about you in the future.

I write books to relieve ­myself of pain. That's the prime motivator to write. Period.

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."

And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention

Rock 'n' roll. Deal with it.