Top 150 Quotes & Sayings by Bret Easton Ellis

I had no idea that 'Less Than Zero' was going to be read by anyone outside of Los Angeles, and it's - believe me, as the writer of the book I'm somewhat amused and intrigued by the idea that 25 years later it's still out and people are still reading it.

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general.

I think basically most men are misogynistic.

Exploitation is a harsh word, I know that, but on a certain level, to me that is the central Hollywood story.

I don't know why I write what I write.

Every book for me is an exorcism in some way or another, working through my feelings at the time.

I do not feel I have a legacy to protect.

I feel like I'm not smart enough to answer the questions I'm asked.

I went to college in Vermont, and then stayed in the East Coast.

Completely committed to adapting 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. This is not a joke. Christian Grey and Ana: potentially great cinematic characters.

I'd rather let the fiction speak for itself and I don't want to write fiction that tells people how to feel, and I don't want to be judgmental in the fiction.

I think my sensibility is very literary; all my books were built as books, and I wasn't thinking about them being movies.

I just sort of write the book I feel like writing given the emotional place I am in my life at the time.

Everyone I know who is successful has issues with their father, regardless of whether it was sports or business or entertainment.

Why would I care what other people are thinking? I don't care what an audience thinks of me.

Hope E. L .James doesn't think I'm being a prankster. I really want to adapt her novels for the screen. Christian Grey is a writer's dream.

If I want to write a movie, I'll write a screenplay, but if I have an idea for a book, it's something that I think can only be done novelistically.

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.

No one is drawn to writing about being happy or feelings of joy.

All of my books come from pain.

Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

Regardless of the business aspect of things, is there a reason that there isn't a female Hitchcock or a female Scorsese or a female Spielberg? I don't know. I think it's a medium that really is built for the male gaze and for a male sensibility.

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

I totally relate to Tom Cruise. He's not crazy, it's just the litany of the mid-life crisis.

No one will ever know anyone. We just have to deal with each other. You're not ever gonna know me.

After a while you learn that everything stops.

I like the idea of a writer being haunted by his own creation, especially if the writer resents the way the character defines him.

A child should never even think about being a "good son." A parent decides that fate for the child. The parent encourages that. Not the child himself. And the "perfect dad"? I shudder at thinking what that may be.

I think a lot of snowflakes are alike...and I think a lot of people are alike too.

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?

Disappear Here. The syringe fills with blood. You're a beautiful boy and that's all that matters. Wonder if he's for sale. People are afraid to merge. To merge.

The better you look, the more you see.

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

Why was I holding on to something that would never be mine? But isn't that what people do?

People can get accustomed to anything, right? Habit does things to people.

I needed something--the distraction of another life--to alleviate fear.

I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is 'Disappear Here' and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.

...if you're alone nothing bad can happen to you.

Not being able to find meaning can be just as powerful as finding meaning.

What does that mean know me, know me, nobody ever knows anybody else, ever! You will never know me.

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?

Yes. Yes I am. I am a completely demented misogynist.

I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

Disintegration---I'm taking it in stride.

You learn to move on without the people you love.

And as the elevator descents, passing the second floor, and the first floor, going even father down, I realize that the money doesn't matter. That all that does is that I want to see the worst

Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is a crock. Some people truly do not need to be here.

I think we've all lost some kind of feeling.

We buy balloons, we let them go.

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.

But this was what happened when you didn't want to visit and confront the past: the past starts visiting and confronting you.

I kept staring into the blackness of the woods, drawn into the darkness as I always had been. I suddenly realized how alone I was. (But this is how you travel, the wind whispered back, this is how you've always lived.)

Michel Houellebecq is the most interesting, provocative and important European novelist of my generation. Period. No one else comes close. He has written two or maybe three great books, and his latest, The Map and the Territory, is one of them.

Life is like a typographical error: we're constantly writing and rewriting things over each other.

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've been accused of being very vain about my apathy.

No one ever likes the right person.

My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone.

Look how black the sky is, the writer said. I made it that way.