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

How could she ever understand that there isn't any way could be disappointed since I no longer find anything worth looking forward to?

I've never written an autobiographical novel in my life. I've never touched upon my life. I've never written a single scene that I can say took place.

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."

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

The images I had were of people being driven mad by living in the city. Images of parents who were so hungry and unfulfilled that they ate their own children.

After a while you learn that everything stops.