James Ellroy famous quotes

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

#Crime #Screws

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

#Writing #Play #Careers

I learn things late-and only the hard way.
-- James Ellroy

#Way

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.
-- James Ellroy

#Men #Blood #Envy

Some people don’t respond to civility.
-- James Ellroy

#People #Civility

As much as I transferred my mother to Elizabeth Shore of The Black Dahlia, as much as her dad mutated into an obsession with crime in general, well, I have thought about other things throughout the years.
-- James Ellroy

#Mother #Dad #Years

The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you've blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won't let you go. Read this book, savor the language-it's the last-and the most compelling word in thrillers.
-- James Ellroy

#Book #Mars #Lasts

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

#Issues #Want #Serious

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

#Rocks #People #Buzz

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

#Character #Plot #Notes

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.
-- James Ellroy

#Novelists #Fiction #Crime

America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
-- James Ellroy

#Regret #Fall #America

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

#People #Murder #Committed

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

#Morning #Bed #Earth

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.
-- James Ellroy

#Giving #Interviews #Chance

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.
-- James Ellroy

#Book #Serial Killer #Viewpoints

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

#Confused #World #Harm

L.A.: Come on vacation, go home on probation.
-- James Ellroy

#Home #Vacation #Los Angeles

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

#People #Claims #Dead People

Where’s your sketch pad?” I asked. … “I gave that up,” Kay said. “I wasn’t very good, so I changed my major.” “To what?” “To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history.” “I like a woman who knows what she wants.” Kay smiled. “So do I, but I don’t know any.
-- James Ellroy

#Psychology #Pads #Want

She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.
-- James Ellroy

#Past #Self #Missing

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

#Fierce #Time Apart #Danger

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.
-- James Ellroy

#Hurt #Stress #Writing

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

#Thinking #Crime #American History

My mother and I will continue on some level that I havent determined yet. I think my mothers a great character, and I have to say that giving my mother to the world has to be the biggest thrill of my writing career.
-- James Ellroy

#Mother #Writing #Character

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

#Moving #Kids

I am conservative by temperament. I disapprove of criminal activity. I am very solidly and markedly on the side of authority. The truth is I would rather err on the side of too much authority than too little.
-- James Ellroy

#Criminals #Littles #Too Much

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

#Book #Archer #Mcdonalds

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

#Thinking #Easy #My Future

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

#Criminals #Stuff #Underworld

I am the most well-adjusted human being I know. I started out this investigation as a very happy man with a great career. I've got the life people dream about: I am rich, I am famous, I've got a fabulous marriage to an absolutely, spell-bindingly brilliant woman.
-- James Ellroy

#Dream #Men #Careers

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.
-- James Ellroy

#Mother #Hate #Years

You're grounded!!!! You can't go out and prowl the L.A. streets. You've got to do something more edifying, emboldening and altogether more groovy. You gots to stay home tonite and read a good book!!!!!!!!!!
-- James Ellroy

#Book #Home #Groovy

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...
-- James Ellroy

#Doors #People #Waiting

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

#Class #Circles #People

I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.
-- James Ellroy

#Ambiguous #Reader #Provoking

When I was a kid, Eisenhower had been President forever, and all of a sudden, everything in the world was all about Jack Kennedy. I was 12, interested in politics; my father was from Massachusetts, had an accent like Kennedy.
-- James Ellroy

#Father #Kids #Forever

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.
-- James Ellroy

#Taken #Simple #Thinking

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.
-- James Ellroy

#School #Kids #Attention