James Ellroy Quotes
"I put on such a good show, the story is outrageous, and people don't want to hear that I'm basically a reasonable human being. As long as it continues to get me print, I'll continue to perform in an exuberant manner."
- James Ellroy
(Related: People, Being, Want)
"I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Career, Months, Play, Writer, Writing)
"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
(Related: Truth, Authority, Conservative, Temperament)
"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
(Related: Life, Marriage, People, Dream, Being, Career, Famous, Investigation, Man, Woman)
"I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals."
- James Ellroy
"I have a very intense marriage."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Marriage)
"I haven't been to a movie in a year and a half."
- James Ellroy
"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
(Related: Work, Chance, Myth)
"I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Love, History, American, Crime, Thinking)
"Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Politics, Crime)
"I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Men, Humanity, Want)
"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
(Related: Attention, School)
"I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers."
- James Ellroy
"I'm clenched down, I'm locked in on it, which is my general approach to life."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Life)
"I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people."
- James Ellroy
(Related: Women, People, Class, Fans, Middle class, Now)
"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
(Related: Love, Books)
"My mother and I will continue on some level that I haven't determined yet. I think my mother's 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
(Related: Mother, Character, Career, Giving, Will, World, Writing)
"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
(Related: Age, Focus, Hurt, Middle age, Stress, Want)
"As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me."
- James Ellroy
(Related: History)
"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
(Related: Books, Road)
"Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it."
- James Ellroy
(Related: People, Murder)
"Rock and rollers can get you the youth buzz, and younger people are fanatical readers."
- James Ellroy
(Related: People, Youth)
"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
(Related: American)
"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
(Related: Time, Mother, Truth, Fact, Hate, Murder, Old, Years)
"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
(Related: Politics, Father, President, World)