“…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.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho
The quote from Bret Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho” provides a profound insight into the psyche of its protagonist, Patrick Bateman, and presents themes of identity, reality, and alienation in a modern consumer-driven society. Set in the 1980s, the novel satirizes the excesses of yuppie culture in Manhattan, portraying Bateman as both a product and a critique of this environment.
