110+ Bret Easton Ellis Quotes On Education, Religion And American Dream

Bret Easton Ellis is an American author best known for his works of transgressive fiction. His works often deal with themes of consumerism, popular culture, and violence. His most famous works include Less Than Zero, American Psycho, and The Rules of Attraction. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Bret Easton Ellis on love, life, education.

Top 10 Bret Easton Ellis Quotes

1. We buy balloons, we let them go.
2. I have to return some videotapes
3. The better you look, the more you see.
4. Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.
5. No one ever likes the right person.
6. And it struck me then, that I liked Sean because he looked, well, slutty. A boy who had been around. A boy who couldn't remember if he was Catholic or not.
7. Baby, when you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live. You know you did, you know you did, you know you did.
8. Every book for me is an exorcism in some way or another, working through my feelings at the time.
9. What does that mean know me, know me, nobody ever knows anybody else, ever! You will never know me.
10. Disintegration---I'm taking it in stride.

Bret Easton Ellis Short Quotes

• Greed is good. Sex is easy. Youth is forever.
• Not being able to find meaning can be just as powerful as finding meaning.
• My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone.
• I feel I'm moving toward as well as away from something, and anything is possible.
• I went to college in Vermont, and then stayed in the East Coast.
• I think a lot of snowflakes are alike...and I think a lot of people are alike too.
• The Smiths are singing and someone says "Turn that gay angst music off.
• Price. You're priceless.
• I think we've all lost some kind of feeling.
• No one will ever know anyone. We just have to deal with each other. You're not ever gonna know me.

Bret Easton Ellis Quotes About Love

I want to moan and writhe with you and I want to go up to you and kiss your mouth and pull you to me and say "I love you I love you I love you" while stripping. I want you so bad it stings. — Bret Easton Ellis

The seeds of love have taken hold and if we won't burn together, I'll burn alone. — Bret Easton Ellis

I only had sex with her because I'm in love with you. — Bret Easton Ellis

You learn to move on without the people you love. — Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis Quotes About Life

When the going gets tough, the tough go drinking. — Bret Easton Ellis

I think in life, there are certain choices you make that are timeless and universal, and don't necessarily have anything to do with the particulars of a certain decade. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

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

I needed something--the distraction of another life--to alleviate fear. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

So…” Kimball looks at his book helplessly. “There’s nothing you can tell me about Paul Owen?” “Well.” I sigh. “He led what I suppose was an orderly life, I guess. “ Really stumped, I offer, “He...ate a balanced diet. — Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis Quotes About Writing

You don't market-research a novel; you really are writing it for yourself. It's a hobby, in many ways. The problem becomes what you do when you're confronted by criticism. You just don't listen to it. — Bret Easton Ellis

Writing a novel that works is an extremely difficult thing to do. It requires a level of skill and dedication that always surprises me. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

I'm not a big believer in disciplined writers. What does discipline mean? The writer who forces himself to sit down and write for seven hours every day might be wasting those seven hours if he's not in the mood and doesn't feel the juice. I don't think discipline equals creativity. — Bret Easton Ellis

I don't know why I write what I write. — Bret Easton Ellis

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 — Bret Easton Ellis

There’s no grand plan. All I know is that I write the books I want to write. All that other stuff is meaningless to me. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

No one is drawn to writing about being happy or feelings of joy. — Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis Famous Quotes And Sayings

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? — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

The snowy owl has eyes that look just like mine, especially when it widens them. And while I stand there, staring at it, lowering my sunglasses, something unspoken passes between me and the bird - there's this weird kind of tension, a bizarre pressure, that fuels the following, which starts, happens, ends, very quickly. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

She sits before me, sullen but hopeful, characterless, about to dissolve into tears. I squeeze her hand back, moved, no, touched by her ignorance of evil. She has one more test to pass. Do you own a briefcase?” I ask her, swallowing. — Bret Easton Ellis

...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there. — Bret Easton Ellis

I'm on the verge of tears by the time we arrive at Pastels since I'm positive we won't get seated but the table is good, and relief that is almost tidal in scope washes over me in an awesome wave. — Bret Easton Ellis

I want to take you away from this," I say, motioning around the kitchen, spastic. "From sushi and elves and... STUFF. — Bret Easton Ellis

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.) — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

People just... disappear," he says. "The Earth just opens up and swallows people," I say, some what sadly, checking my Rolex. "Eerie." Kimball yawns, stretching. "Really eerie." "Ominous." I nod my agreement. "It's just"- he sights, exasperated- "futile. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

That's how I became the damaged party boy who wandered through the wreckage, blood streaming from his nose, asking questions that never required answers. That's how I became the boy who never understood how anything worked. That's how I became the boy who wouldn't save a friend. That's how I became the boy who couldn't love the girl. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

Hello, Halberstam," Owen says, walking by. Hello, Owen," I say, admiring the way he's styled and slicked back his hair, with a part so even and sharp it... devastates me and I make a mental note to ask him where he purchases his hair-care products, which kind of mousse he uses, my final guesses after mulling over the possibilities being Ten-X. — Bret Easton Ellis

I really believe that readers are smart and sophisticated enough to realize that the author is not the narrator of his novels. — Bret Easton Ellis

There’s no use in denying it: this has been a bad week. I’ve started drinking my own urine. — Bret Easton Ellis

I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general. — Bret Easton Ellis

If you come at movies with your own sense of morality and not your own sense of aesthetics, I think you're screwed. I think that's not a way to look at movies. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

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." — Bret Easton Ellis

Rock 'n' roll. Deal with it. — Bret Easton Ellis

I tried to make meat loaf out of the girl but it becomes too frustrating a task and instead I spend the afternoon smearing her meat all over the walls, chewing on strips of skin I ripped from her body — Bret Easton Ellis

I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation. — Bret Easton Ellis

Adjust my dreams for me. — Bret Easton Ellis

By the time you finish reading this sentence, a Boeing jetliner will take off or land somewhere in the world. — Bret Easton Ellis

...if you're alone nothing bad can happen to you. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do? — Bret Easton Ellis

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

I've been accused of being very vain about my apathy. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

I like to dissect girls. Did you know I'm utterly insane? — Bret Easton Ellis

I think the books are the books. They were conceived as books. They weren't conceived as movies. When I write scripts, that's an idea and a situation that I think is a really good idea for a movie. When I'm writing a book, I'm not thinking, "Oh, this would be a great movie." This would be a very interesting book. And I think the books are things that cannot really be adapted into another medium. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

I do not feel I have a legacy to protect. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

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

I could stay living in this city if they just installed Blaupunkts in the cabs. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

And as things fell apart, nobody paid much attention — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

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

My pain is constant and sharp...this confession has meant nothing — Bret Easton Ellis

A great numb feeling washes over me as I let go of the past and look forward to the future. Pretend to be a vampire. I don't really need to pretend, because it's who I am, an emotional vampire. I've just come to expect it. Vampires are real. That I was born this way. That I feed off of other people's real emotions. Search for this night's prey. Who will it be? — Bret Easton Ellis

Hip," I murmur, remembering last night, how I lost it completely in a stall at Nell's---my mouth foaming, all I could think about were insects, lots of insects, and running at pigeons, foaming at the mouth and running at pigeons. — Bret Easton Ellis

I learned that you really don't have any control as a writer. Waah, waah, waah. Big deal. 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. As someone who's just writing scripts, you just kind of have to shrug. I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general. It is what it is. — Bret Easton Ellis

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

I am gripped by an existential panic. — Bret Easton Ellis

And," Price adds, smiling, "if another round of Bellinis comes within a twenty-foot radius of our table we are going to set the maitre d' on fire. So you know, warn him. — Bret Easton Ellis

I think basically most men are misogynistic. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

'Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?' [...] '"When I see a pretty girl walking down the street I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her and be real nice and sweet and treat her right."' I stop finish my J&B in one swallow. 'What does the other part of him think?' Hamlin asks tentatively. 'What her head would look like on a stick...' — Bret Easton Ellis

All of my books come from pain. — Bret Easton Ellis

The numbing lists of things you were supposed to have as an American to make you happy, which ultimately, of course, don't. Those aren't the things that make you happy. — Bret Easton Ellis

A curtain of stars, miles of them, are scattered, glowing, across the sky and their multitude humbles me, which I have a hard time tolerating. She shrugs and nods after I say something about forms of anxiety. It's as if her mind is having a hard time communicating with her mouth, as if she is searching for a rational analysis of who I am, which is, of course, an impossibility: there... is... no... key. — Bret Easton Ellis

But... what about us? What about the past?" she asks blankly. "The past isn't real. it's just a dream," I say. "Don't mention the past. — Bret Easton Ellis

Writing fiction is an act of imagination and fantasizing, and it's not relating in prose what you've been doing for the last two or three years. — Bret Easton Ellis

It's like my characters, all my men are Dad and me in a mess; all my female characters are smart and hopeful, like Mom just trying to make the best of things. — Bret Easton Ellis

It's because you're always fighting sentiment. You're fighting sentimentality all of the time because being a mother alerts you in such a primal way. — Bret Easton Ellis

If you start looking at movies on a moral level - "I don't like that, that hurts, that's mean, that's bad" - then I don't even want to talk to you. Or like, someone that says "I don't like science-fiction movies," or "I don't want to sit through a Western," or "I don't like violence in movies," then I completely tune out. — Bret Easton Ellis

What do you do?' she asks, holding out the vest. 'What do you do?' 'What do you do?' she asks, her voice shaking. 'Don't ask me, please. Okay, Clay?' 'Why not?' She sits on the mattress after I get up. Muriel screams. 'Because... I don't know,' she sighs. I look at her and don't feel anything and walk out with my vest. — Bret Easton Ellis

What keeps me interested--and it always does--is how can she be a bad actress on film but a good one in reality? — Bret Easton Ellis

Look how black the sky is, the writer said. I made it that way. — Bret Easton Ellis

People can get accustomed to anything, right? Habit does things to people. — Bret Easton Ellis

I wasn't acting on passion. I was simply acting. — Bret Easton Ellis

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

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. — Bret Easton Ellis

Life Lessons by Bret Easton Ellis

1. Bret Easton Ellis encourages readers to take risks and embrace change, as life can be unpredictable and often requires us to adapt to new situations.
2. He also emphasizes the importance of understanding our own motivations and being honest with ourselves in order to make the best decisions.
3. Finally, Ellis encourages readers to be open to new experiences and to strive for personal growth and development.