I don't want to recover from writing this book [The Onion]. I feel very poised. I feel like I'm with my mother… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I'm trying to be less bombastic. I love my books. I think I've done things nobody else has done. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I have insane curiosity as to what happened in all these events. I will never know. I'm not a researcher. I don't… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
Every one of my books is written from the viewpoint of cops, with the exception of my book Killer on the Road,… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
When I look at Perfidia, I think, "That's a Pulitzer Prize winner. That's a National Book Award winner." It's not going to… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
How did I change my life? I wanted things. I wanted women and I wanted to write books. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
Joe Wambaugh's a friend. I know him only casually, but I like him a lot. I think he likes my books. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I like to have fun out there. I work hard, and then I get to cut loose and go out and tour,… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I don't have a cellphone or a computer. I deliberately circumscribe my mental life within the periods that I write about, and… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
History is a state of yearning. I yearn for Kay Lake throughout this entire thing. There's an essay I've written where I… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
“Achtung, motherfuckers. And good afternoon. I'm James Ellroy; the death dog with the hog log, the white knight of the far right,… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
You try to learn who you are. You work hard. You've either got it or you don't when it comes to writing… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
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… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
The 250-page outline for American Tabloid. The books are so dense. They're so complex, you cannot write like I write off the… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you've blasted to… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
My guys are morally weak, and they reach toward a tenuous knowledge of self-sacrifice, and sometimes it's too late. I find that… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I'd never been interested in the Kennedy assassination until '88, when I read Libra. And from that point, I went out and… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
“Fear and I played peek-a-boo - it always seemed to grab my balls and twist just when it felt like something inside me could… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
My father actually went to college, and my mother went to nursing school, so, you know. I wouldn't... They were actually too square and… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I've created a narrative of the world. I live in the world - tenuously, most times. I've avoided the digital world. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
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… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
In the time just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Perfidia opens, we were pre-psychologized. There were no concepts of identity, no politics… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
“It all came down to money - the great equalizer and common denominator.” — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I think the great unspoken theme in noir fiction is male self-pity. It pervades noir movies. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
“I didn't care who we were. I required no consummation. I knew that whoever we were and whatever we had would never stop.” — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
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?”… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime novelist who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
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… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
