Rock and rollers can get you the youth buzz, and younger people are fanatical readers. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I put on such a good show, the story is outrageous, and people don't want to hear that I'm basically a reasonable… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I'm way past the idea of using ideology or political view as a gauge of human character. I simply don't believe it.… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
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… — 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'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
Other people, some other writers, will win certain accolades or sell in far greater numbers than me - and I'm a legitimate… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it. — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
Sometimes I'll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me - it's been there a million years… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
The 1950s to me is darkness, hidden history, perversion behind most doors waiting to creep out. The 1950s to most people is… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I wanted to portray a newly democratized, enclosed society. I wanted to show how extraordinarily fluid people are in their embrace of… — James Ellroy Copy Share Image
I am the most well-adjusted human being I know. I started out this investigation as a very happy man with a great… — 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