And though the coldness I have always felt leaves me, the numbness doesn't and probably never will. this relationship will probably lead to nothing... this didn't change anything. I imagine her smelling clean, like tea.

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

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."

I wasn't acting on passion. I was simply acting.

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

but I don't want to wear a condom because I don't feel anything," and she says calmly... glaring at me,"If you don't use one you're not going to feel anything anyway.

What else is there to do in college except drink beer or slit one's wrists?