[Stepping out from the shadow of Psycho , and such other iconic works as Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction , has been difficult for Ellis.] I had spent 10 years working on an outline about a writer very much like myself, ... He was a fictional writer who had written fictional books, one about a serial killer. He'd had hard times, drug and alcohol problems, and had fathered an 11-year-old boy. Something was stopping me from writing the book. Then I thought, this guy has similarities to you, why don't you make him you? |
After spending three years with Patrick Bateman (from 1991's |
As a writer you slant all evidence in favor of the conclusions you want to produce, and you rarely tilt in favor of the truth, |
everything that I find horrible about society. |
Fun is what reading a book should be. I had fun writing it. I wanted a reader to be gripped but it shouldn't be a heavy experience. |
I convinced myself I hadn't seen anything, ... I had done this many times before ... I was adept at erasing reality. |
I didn't want to write another long experimental novel. |
I feel like I'm not smart enough to answer the questions I'm asked. |
I grew up in suburbia, |
I hadn't published a book in six years so I didn't know what to expect. It has been going very well. They've all been packed. |
I like the idea of a writer being haunted by his own creation, especially if the writer resents the way the character defines him, |
I locked myself in a room for a month, |
I totally relate to Tom Cruise, ... He?s not crazy, it?s just the litany of the mid-life crisis. |
I was doing Ray-Ban ads at 22. I was posing for the covers of English magazines on a tennis court, on a throne, on the deck of my condo in a purple robe. ... I crashed a borrowed Ferrari in Southampton and its owner just smiled (for some reason I was naked). |
I'm a believer that a book should exist on its own, |