James Ellroy Quotes

Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.

I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.

Tell me anything. Tell me everything. Revoke our time apart. Love me fierce in danger.

L.A.: Come on vacation, go home on probation.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books.

Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.

I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.

I learn things late-and only the hard way.

Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good?

To me, there's nothing on earth other than women. It's why I get out of bed every morning.

Some people don’t respond to civility.

I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.

I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

It was easy not to think of my future; I didn't have one.

The 1950s to me is darkness, hidden history, perversion behind most doors waiting to creep out. The 1950s to most people is kitsch and Mickey Mouse watches and all this intolerable stuff.

As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

I'm not interested in popular culture. I hate Quentin Tarantino. I rarely go to movies. I hate rock 'n' roll. I work. I think. I listen to classical music. I brood. I like sports cars.

As critical acclaim and response has built up, every interview I give is a chance to puncture the myth I've created about my work and refine it.

I think I'm out of crime fiction now, and I think the dividing line is American Tabloid.

Every one of my books is written from the viewpoint of cops, with the exception of my book Killer on the Road, which is written from the viewpoint of a serial killer.

Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist.

I'm trying to be less bombastic. I love my books. I think I've done things nobody else has done.

Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.

I don't have children. I serve the world and I serve God by living as deep within my work as I can, reveling in the language of other times and putting it forth for the world.

And you love to read, you love to escape, right?

I wanted to portray a newly democratized, enclosed society. I wanted to show how extraordinarily fluid people are in their embrace of other human beings.

I don't feel in any way obligated to remain current with the culture. I feel no social obligation whatsoever. I trust my morality in the narrow path I trek through the world as I work.

Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.

Closure is a preposterous concept worthy of the worst aspects of American daytime TV.

I got a woman I'm loyal to above all things, above my career. She's profound to me. I'm quiet. I live in Kansas City. I work.

I was a WASP kid going to a high school that was 99 percent Jewish and I wanted attention and I wanted to make a spectacle of myself because I couldn't stand to be ignored.

The truth of the matter is, you lose a parent to murder when you're 10 years old, and in fact at the time of the murder you hate your lost parent, my mother in my case.

I like to have fun out there. I work hard, and then I get to cut loose and go out and tour, and I enjoy it. I like to go out and meet the people. I love to sell books.

There's none with me, although you've seen me before - I'm outrageous.

Rock and rollers can get you the youth buzz, and younger people are fanatical readers.

You get up in the morning because you might meet a woman. And if you stay at home by yourself, alone, you will not meet a woman.

I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime novelist who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian novel and what Beethoven is to music.

I'm grateful for the life I have. I lived bad for many years, and I've got a great life now. I've got the kind of life people only dream about.

I almost had an intransigent mental spirit. I always wanted things.

All I want to do is make serious movies that explore social issues and turn a profit, and slip the schnitzel to Jane DePugh.

How did I change my life? I wanted things. I wanted women and I wanted to write books.

[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people.

I drank, I used drugs, I broke into houses, sniffed women's undergarments. I ate Benzedrex inhalers, jacked off for 18 hours at a pop, lived with my dad in a shitpad.

I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies.

"War gives men a plain-and-simple something to do ... Women write diaries in the hope that their words will beckon fate." It's a romantic manifesto.

I don't want to recover from writing this book [The Onion]. I feel very poised. I feel like I'm with my mother for the first time ever. I feel like I've confronted her, and the confrontation goes on.