Roland > Roland's Quotes

“Where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one’s own taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person’s love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term “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. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface, was all that anyone found meaning in…this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“All it comes down to is this: I feel like shit but look great.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“I've forgotten who I had lunch with earlier, and even more important, where.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“I'm into, oh murders and executions mostly. It depends.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“This is not an exit.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“People just... disappear," he says.
"The Earth just opens up and swallows people," I say, some what sadly, checking my Rolex.
"Eerie." Kimball yawns, stretching. "Really eerie."
"Ominous." I nod my agreement.
"It's just"- he sights, exasperated- "futile.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“suddenly I’m seized by a minor anxiety attack. There are too many fucking movies to choose from.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“Most importantly we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“A young girl, a freshman, I met in a bar in Cambridge my junior year at Harvard told me early one fall that “Life is full of endless possibilities.” I tried valiantly nog to choke on the beer nuts I was chewing while she gushed this kidney stone of wisdom, and I calmly washed them down with the rest of a Heineken, smiled and concentrated on the dart game that was going on in the corner. Needless to say, she did not live to see her sophomore year.That winter, her body was found floating in the Charles River, decapitated, her head hung from a tree on the bank, her hair knotted around a low-hanging branch, three miles away.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“What do you want, Patrick?" she sighs.
"I just want peace, love, friendship, understanding," I say dispassionately.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
― Ernest Hemingway