I want to stay,” and then, more weakly, “Need some more sun.”A fly from a batch of seaweed lands on a white, bony thigh. She doesn’t slap at it. It doesn’t go away.”But there’s no...

A vast and abandoned world laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide.

How do I know you’re not crazy?” she asks. “How do I know you’re not the craziest dude I’ve ever met?” “You’ll have to test me out.” “You have my info,” she says. “I’ll think...

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.

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,...

The book was blunt and had an honesty about it, whereas the movie was just a beautiful lie.

Yes. Yes I am. I am a completely demented misogynist.

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

Akthent on thee latht thyllable.

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

The real Julian Wells didn’t die in a cherry-red convertible, overdosing on a highway in Joshua Tree while a choir soared over the sound track.

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.

Careless and not particularly biting, it was easier to shrug off than anything in the first book which depicted me as an inarticulate zombie confused by the irony of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.

generosity of spirit” applied to nothing, was a cliche, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire—meaningless. Intellect is not a cure....

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...

The better you look, the more you see.

In the movie I was played by an actor who actually looked more like me than the character the author portrayed in the book: I wasn’t blond, I wasn’t tan, and neither was the actor....

He wasn’t, I realized when I read those scenes concerning Blair and myself, close to any of us– except of course to Blair, and really not even to her. He was simply someone who floated...

At Columbus Circle, a juggler wearing a trench cloak and top hat, who is usually at this location afternoons and who calls himself Stretch Man, performs in front of a small, uninterested crowd; though I...

But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because...

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Blair picks me up from LAX and mutters this under her...

I had this dream, see, where I saw the whole world melt. I was standing on La Cienega and from there I could see the whole world and it was melting and it was just...

The audience– the book’s actual cast– quickly realized what had happened. The reason the movie dropped everything that made the novel real was because there was no way the parents who ran the studio would...

Everything suddenly seems displaced, subtle gradations erase borders, but it’s more forceful than that.

What? Did we end up hating each other? Did we end up the way we thought we always knew would? Did I end up wearing khakis because of that fucking ad?

I needed something–the distraction of another life–to alleviate fear.

I had all the characteristics of a human being– flesh, blood, skin, hair– but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim...

… Because the writer resented that she had turned to me I became the handsome and dazed narrator, incapable of love or kindness. That’s how I became the damaged party boy who wandered through the...

This is laid down with a groove funkier and blacker than anything Prince of Michael Jackson–or any other black artist of the recent years for that matter–has come up with.

But you don’t need anything. You have everything,’ I tell him.Rip looks at me. ‘No I don’t.”What?”No I don’t.’There’s a pause and then I ask, ‘Oh, shit, Rip, What don’t you have?”I don’t have anything...

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...

I think a lot of snowflakes are alike…and I think a lot of people are alike too.

It’s basically a joke.” “I think it’s cool,” Julian says. “It’s all about control, right?” He considers something. “It’s not a joke. You should take it seriously. I mean, you’re also one of the producers–”...

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...

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.

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...

Things get very much more ominous, Victor,” and then I was left alone.

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 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...

I have to return some videotapes

Why was I holding on to something that would never be mine? But isn’t that what people do?

What you need is a chick from Camden,’ Van Patten says, after recovering from McDermott’s statement.Oh great,’ I say. ‘Some chick who thinks it’s okay to fuck her brother.’Yeah, but they think AIDS is a...

Over the Rainbow” straight into my ear, things changing, falling apart, fading, another year, a few more moves, a hard person who doesn’t give a fuck, a boredom so monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting...

She said that you–” “I don’t care what she said.” I stand up. “Everyone lies.” “Hey,” he says softly. “It’s just a code.” “No. Everyone lies.” I stub the cigarette out. “It’s just another language...

Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire – meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead.

I’m resourceful,” Price is saying. “I’m creative, I’m young, unscrupulous, highly motivate, highly skilled. In essence what I’m saying is that society cannot afford to lose me. I’m an asset

My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone.

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...

Looking at Tim, one cannot help feeling great waves of uncertainty, an absence of aim, of purpose, as if he is a person who simply doesn’t matter.

what’s right? If you want something, you have the right to take it. If you want to do something, you have the right to do it.