Bret Easton Ellis

Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire - meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead.

The Dave Matthews Band__ __rash into Me_ played over the montage, not that the lyrics had anything to do with the images the song was played over but it was __aunting_, it was __oody_, it was __umming things up_, it gave the footage an __motional resonance_ that I guess we were incapable of capturing ourselves. At first my feelings were basically so what? But then I suggested other music: __urt_ by Nine Inch Nails, but I was told that the rights were sky-high and that the song was __oo ominous_ for this sequence; Nada Surf__ __opular_ had __oo many minor chords_, it didn__ fit the __ood of the piece,_ it was _ again _ __oo ominous._ When I told them I seriously did not think things could get any more fucking ominous than they already were, I was told, __hings get very much more ominous, Victor,_ and then I was left alone.

When we sat down to eat I took inventory of the people in the room, and the remnants of my good mood evaporated when I realized how very little I had in common with them _ the career dads, the responsible and diligent moms _ and I was soon filled with dread and loneliness. I locked in on the smug feeling of superiority that married couples give off and that permeated the air _ the shared assumptions, the sweet and contented apathy, it all lingered everywhere _ despite the absence in the room of anyone single at which to aim this.

If you cannot read Shakespeare, or Melville, or Toni Morrison because it will trigger something traumatic in you, and you'll be harmed by the reading of the text because you are still defining yourself through your self-victimization, then you need to see a doctor.

If you cannot read Shakespeare, or Melville, or Toni Morrison because it will trigger something traumatic in you, and you'll be harmed by the read of the text because you are still defining yourself through your self-victimization, then you need to see a doctor.

The better you look, the more you see.

Women aren't very bright," Rip says. "Studies have been done.

I had dreamed of something so different from what reality was now offering up, but that dream had been a blind man's vision. That dream was a miracle. The morning was fading. And I remembered yet again that I was a tourist here.

I have to return some videotapes

You learn to move on without the people you love.

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

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her breath as she drives up the onramp. She says, "People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles." Though that sentence shouldn't bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I'm eighteen and it's December and the ride on the plane had been rough and the couple from Santa Barbara, who were sitting across from me in first class, had gotten pretty drunk. Not the mud that had splattered on the legs of my jeans, which felt kind of cold and loose, earlier that day at an airport in New Hampshire. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp shirt I wear, a shirt which looked fresh and clean this morning. Not the tear on the neck of my gray argyle vest, which seems vaguely more eastern than before, especially next to Blair's clean tight jeans and her pale-blue shirt. All of this seems irrelevant next to that one sentence. It seems easier to hear that people are afraid to merge than "I'm pretty sure Muriel is anorexic" or the singer on the radio crying out about magnetic waves. Nothing else seems to matter to me but those ten words. Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the car down the empty asphalt freeway, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Blaire's car. All it comes down to is the fact that I'm a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven't seen for four months and people are afraid to merge.

What? Did we end up hating each other? Did we end up the way we thought we always knew would? Did I end up wearing khakis because of that fucking ad?

The real Julian Wells didn't die in a cherry-red convertible, overdosing on a highway in Joshua Tree while a choir soared over the sound track.

The book was blunt and had an honesty about it, whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie.

Confusion and hopelessness don't necessarily cause a person to act.

__BretEastonEllis 31 MarAfter watching the delirious Room 237 I realized that the worst thing happening to movies was the empowerment of the viewer via technology.

In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn't blond, I wasn't tan, and neither was the actor. I also suddenly became the movie's moral compass, spouting AA jargon, castigating everyone's drug use and trying to save Julian. (I'll sell my car," I warn the actor playing Julian's dealer. "Whatever it takes.") This was slightly less true of Blair's character, played by a girl who actually seemed like she belonged in our group-- jittery, sexually available, easily wounded. Julian became the sentimentalized version of himself, acted by a talented, sad-faced clown, who has an affair with Blair and then realizes he has to let her go because I was his best bud. "Be good to her," Julian tells Clay. "She really deserves it." The sheer hypocrisy of this scene must have made the author blanch. Smiling secretly to myself with perverse satisfaction when the actor delivered that line, I then glanced at Blair in the darkness of the screening room.