American Psycho

by Bret Easton Ellis

“No I’m not,” I whisper to myself. “I’m a fucking evil psychopath.”

Did I do this on purpose? What do you think? Or did I do this accidentally?

“I have to return some videos,”

it strikes me profoundly that the world is more often than not a bad and cruel place.

Everything failed to subdue me. Soon everything seemed dull: another sunrise, the lives of heroes, falling in love, war, the discoveries people made about each other.

I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only a dim corner of my mind functioning.

This is my reality. Everything outside of this is like some movie I once saw.

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. It

Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?

My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this—and I have, countless times, in just about every act I’ve committed—and coming face-to-face with these truths, there is no catharsis. I gain no deeper knowledge about myself, no new understanding can be extracted from my telling. There has been no reason for me to tell you any of this. This confession has meant nothing