it's interesting, this idea of being so overwhelmingly influenced by pop culture, and yet, in your writing, not that influenced by events in your life. that's a new idea very common to artists of this generation. you're making up stuff, but at the same time it's autobiographical because it stems from how you're feeling. i think temperament and sensibility can be autobiographical. american psycho was, for me, an autobiographical novel. not because i went around chopping up prostitutes, not because i worked on wall street, but because the tone of the book accurately reflects how i was feeling when i was writing it. if i was a well-adjusted happy person doing the writing of that book, it would have been a much different book. it would have been a lot less violent and bitter.

—bret easton elllis