From "Less Than Zero"

In this scene, the narrator and his girlfriend, Blair, have left L.A. for a beach house in Monterey and have spent a lazy, idyllic few days floating on a case of champagne they found in the garage.

"The house was old and faded and had a courtyard and a tennis court, but we didn't play tennis. Instead, I'd wander around the house at night and listen to old records I used to like and sit in the courtyard and drink what was left of the champagne. . . .

"Soon the champagne ran out and I opened the liquor cabinet. Blair got tan and so did I, and by the end of the week, all we did was watch television, even though the reception wasn't too good, and drink bourbon, and Blair would arrange shells into circular patterns on the floor of the living room. When Blair muttered one night while we sat on opposite sides of the living room, 'We should have gone to Palm Springs,' I knew then that it was time to leave."

From "American Psycho"

Here, homicidal yuppie Patrick Bateman sizes up an artsy guest at a dinner party thrown by a friend.

"Stash doesn't speak. Even though he is probably uncomfortable at the table with us since he looks nothing like the rest of us -- his hair isn't slicked back, no suspenders, no horn-rimmed glasses, the clothes black and ill-fitting, no urge to light and suck on a cigar, probably unable to secure a table at Camols, his net worth a pittance -- still, his behavior lacks warrant and he sits there as if hypnotized by the glistening piece of sushi and just as the table is about to finally ignore him, to look away and start eating, he sits up and loudly says, pointing an accusing finger at his plate, 'It moved!' "

From "Glamorama"

Much of the book takes place in New York's fashion world, though its plot also tangles with international terrorism; here, its model-narrator has a flashback to California.

"The last time Chloe and I were in L.A.: a rehab stint in a famously undisclosed location that only me and one of Chloe's publicists knew about. The various strings had been pulled and Chloe bypassed waiting lists, landing in a fairly posh cell: she had her own deluxe adobe-inspired bungalow with a daiquiri-blue-colored sunken living room, a patio with faux-'70s lounge chairs, a giant marble bathtub decorated with pink eels and dozens of mini-Jacuzzi jets, and there was an indoor pool and a fully equipped gym and an arts-and-crafts center but there wasn't a television set so I had to tape 'All My Children' on the VCR in the hotel room I was staying at in a nearby desert town, which was really the least I could do. Chloe had her own horse, named Raisin."

From "Lunar Park"

This passage comes from the faux-memoir-ish opening of the novel -- most of the book is Stephen King-inspired horror -- that mixes fact about Ellis' life with parodic exaggeration.

"Everything I did was written about. The paparazzi followed me constantly. A spilled drink in Nell's suggested drunkenness in a Page Six item in the New York Post. Dining at Canal Bar with Judd Nelson and Robert Downey Jr., who costarred in the movie adaptation of 'Less Than Zero,' suggested 'bad behavior' (true, but still). . . . I crashed a borrowed Ferrari in Southampton and its owner just smiled (for some reason I was naked). I attended three fairly exclusive orgies. . . . My life was an unfolding parade made all the more magical by the constant materialization of cocaine, and if you wanted to hang out with me you had to carry at least an eight ball."