Lunar Park Quotes

“Look how black the sky is, the writer said. I made it that way.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“Why was I holding on to something that would never be mine? But isn't that what people do?”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“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, Lunar Park

“You learn to move on without the people you love.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“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, Lunar Park

“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. ...This is what a writer does: his life is a maelstrom of lying. Embellishment is his focal point. This is what we do to please others. This is what we do in order to flee ourselves. A writer's physical life is basically one of stasis, and to combat this constraint, an opposite world and another self have to be constructed daily. ...the half world of a writer's life encourages pain and drama, and defeat is good for art: if it was day we made it night, if it was love we made it hate, serenity becomes chaos, kindness became viciousness, God became the devil, a daugher became a whore. I had been inordinately rewarded for participating in this process, and lying often leaked from my writing life--an enclosed sphere of consciousness, a place suspended outside of time, where the untruths flowed onto the whiteness of a blank screen--into the part of me that was tactile and alive.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“From those of us who are left behind: you will be remembered, you were the one I needed, I loved you in my dreams.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“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, Lunar Park

“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.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“I needed something--the distraction of another life--to alleviate fear.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You’re my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn’t believe it, and it wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“The reassuring smile was now useless. I was plastic. Everything was veiled. Objectivity, facts, hard information--these were things only in the outline stage. There was nothing tying anything together yet, so the mind built up a defense, and the evidence was restructured, and that was what I tried to do on that morning--to restructure the evidence so it made sense--and that is what I failed at.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“Why was I holding on to something that would never be mine?"
(But isn't that what people do?)”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“There was something beneath the surface of things.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“Haven't we outgrown all this tired irony? Weren't we supposed to give up acting twenty-two forever?”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“I concluded with an aching finality that the could-happen possibilities were gone, and that doing whatever you wanted was over. The future didn’t exist anymore. Everything was in the past and would stay there.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“Todo el mundo tiene meido. Pero si nos mantenemos unidos, si intentamos estar disponibles para los otros, ya no tendremos miedo.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“Cualquiera que fuera el interés que compartían se evaporó tan rápido que pareció no haber existido en absoluto. Robby se nos acercó penosamente bajo el destello de las luces del centro comercial y de pronto me preocupó que su vida tuviera tan poco de poesía o romanticismo. Todo giraba en torno a una cotidianidad ansiosa y aburrida. Todo era una representación”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“The polite conversation that carried over from cocktails into dinner was so stifling that it carried a certain ruthlessness,”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“It was always the A booth. It was always the front seat of the roller coaster. It was never “Let’s not get the bottle of Cristal.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“This was sending me out so much further than I had ever expected: a place beyond strength.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“En cuanto me di cuenta de que estaba completamente solo comprendí, sólo entonces, que tenía problemas graves. Mi actitud nostálgica con respecto a la fama y las drogas -el placer de comadecerme a mí mismo- se había transformado en tristeza y el futuro ya no me parecía ni remotamente plausible. Solamente una cosa parecía correr hacia mí: una negrura, una tumba, el final”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“E-mail memo #34: "Miami Book Fair; writer locked himself in bookstore bathroom repeatedly yelling at concerned employees to 'Go away!' When writer emerged an hour later he started to 'freak out' afain. 'I have a snake on me!' writer screamed. 'It's biting me! It's IN MY MOUTH!' Writer was dragged to a waiting squad car while holding on to a bewildered young yeshiva student attending the reading -- whom writer continuously fondled and groped -- until ambulance arrived. His eyes rolling back into his head, writer's last words -- shouted -- before being driven off were quote 'I am keeping the Jew-boy' unquote.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“Robby intentaba no gemir pero incluso borracho detecté el miedo en su voz. Carraspeé, con los ojos todavía cerrados.
- ¿Qué quieres decir?
- Creo que algo está subiendo las escaleras. Algo está arañando la puerta de mi cuarto.
Según Robby por lo visto contesté:
- Estoy seguro de que no es nada. Vuelve a la cama.
- No puedo, papá - replicó Robby -. Tengo miedo.
("Bueno, y yo. Bienvenido al club. Vete acostumbrando, porque no se pasa.")”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“Bueno lo del matrimonio no está mal...Pero lo de hacer de padre es más duro. "Papi ¿puedo beberme un zumo?" "¿Qué tal un poco de agua, cielo?" "¿Papi?" "¿Sí?" "¿Puedo beberme un zumo?" "¿Qué tal un poco de agua, cielo?" "¿Papi, puedo beberme un zumo?" "Vale cielo, ¿Quieres un zumo?" "No, da igual, beberé un poco de agua." Es como si estuviéramos todo el rato ensayando una puta obra de Beckett”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“Jayne desiderava crescere figli dotati, disciplinati, ambiziosi, ma aveva paura praticamente di tutto: dei pedofili, dei batteri, dei fuoristrada (ne possedevamo uno), delle armi, della pornografia, della musica rap, dello zucchero raffinato, dei raggi ultravioletti, dei terroristi, di noi stessi.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“[...] ma c'erano ondate di notizie che le riusciva impossibile padroneggiare.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“Stava tornando nel luogo dove si ritira ogni ragazzo costretto al coraggio e alla prontezza: una nuova vita. Ovunque fosse diretto, non aveva paura.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“You do an awfully good impression of yourself.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“I felt I had time to redeem myself. But not on Halloween.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park