“Bruce Wagner writes really wonderfully about that whole milieu [of Hollywood] and its gothic vanity.”
Emma Cline

“Amputation is astonishing - scorching, ruthless, and finally mournful. It is a supreme achievement.”
Todd Solondz

“Dead Stars is the cruelest book ever written.”
John Waters

“[Wagner’s The Empty Chair] would make a fine fictional companion to the Trappist monk Thomas Merton’s writings on spiritual outrage and the impossibility of solace.”
 Dani Shapiro

“To say that [Maps To The Stars] deglamorizes the movie business is like saying that Upton Sinclair deglamorized the meat-packing industry… the medium of film allows Wagner to make his audience visualize (instead of merely imagine) the hallucinations that plague his characters.”
Francine Prose

“Wagner is a James Joyce whose Dublin is Hollywood.”
David Cronenberg

“Bruce Wagner’s stories about Hollywood are the best I’ve read since F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West.”
Terry Southern

“Wagner writes like a wizard. His prose writhes and coruscates.”
John Updike