The right card, or the right cloth, or the right table, or the right watch, how these are the signposts of an empty age and an empty soul, and how these things have more value than your fellow man... or woman.
Bateman attains everything the materialistic times tells him he should want, but once he gets it he feels nothing. Emptier than before, less than before. It's only in the extremes of his addictions he begins to feel something, anything. He feeds to fill the emptiness, but the more he feeds the emptier he gets. He eats at his fellowman (woman) but in his bloodlust he eats at himself.
He is the American dream, taken to its cannibalistic extremes.
[first lines]
Waiter #1: Our pasta this evening is squid ravioli in a lemon grass broth with goat cheese profiteroles, and I also have an arugula Caesar salad. For entrees this evening, I have swordfish meatloaf with onion marmalade, rare roasted partridge breast in raspberry coulis with a sorrel timbale.
Waiter #2: ...and grilled free-range rabbit with herbed french fries. Our pasta tonight is a squid ravioli in a lemon grass broth, and the fish tonight is a grilled...
Patrick Bateman: New card. What do you think?
Craig McDermott: Whoa-ho. Very nice. Look at that.
Patrick Bateman: Picked them up from the printer's yesterday.
David Van Patten: Good coloring.
Patrick Bateman: That's bone. And the lettering is something called Silian Rail.
David Van Patten: It's very cool, Bateman, but that's nothing. Look at this.
Timothy Bryce: That is really nice.
David Van Patten: Eggshell with Romalian type. What do you think?
Patrick Bateman: Nice.
Timothy Bryce: Jesus. That is really super. How'd a nitwit like you get so tasteful?
Patrick Bateman: [Thinking] I can't believe that Bryce prefers Van Patten's card to mine.
Timothy Bryce: But wait. You ain't seen nothin' yet. Raised lettering, pale nimbus. White.
Patrick Bateman: Impressive. Very nice.
David Van Patten: Hmm.
Patrick Bateman: Let's see Paul Allen's card.
Patrick Bateman: [Thinking] Look at that subtle off-white coloring. The tasteful thickness of it. Oh, my God. It even has a watermark.
Luis Carruthers: Is something wrong, Patrick? You're sweating.
Craig McDermott: If they have a great personality and they're not great looking... then who fucking cares?
Patrick Bateman: Well, let's just say hypotetically ok? What if they have a great personality?
[pause, all laugh]
Patrick Bateman: I know, I know.
[all in unison]
Patrick Bateman,Craig McDermott,David Van Patten: There are no girls with good personalities.
David Van Patten: A good personality consists of a chick with a little hard body, who will satisfy all sexual demands without being too slutty about things, and who essentially will keep her dumb fucking mouth shut.
Craig McDermott: The only girls with good personalities who are smart or maybe funny or halfway intelligent or talented, though god knows what the fuck that means, are ugly chicks.
David Van Patten: Absolutely.
Craig McDermott: And this is because they have to make up for how fucking unnattractive they are.
[last lines]
Patrick Bateman: There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. 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, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.
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