James Ellroy Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of James Ellroy's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Crime writer James Ellroy's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 99 quotes on this page collected since March 4, 1948! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • I cleaned up. I quit drinking, I quit doing drugs, I quit stealing, I quit breaking into houses, I tried to quit being a bad human being. I developed a conscience later in life than many. I call it the lost-time-regained dynamic.

    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview by John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
  • I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

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

    Interview with Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 9, 2014.
  • I needed to address that I've had some profound moral shifts in my own life.

    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview by John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
  • 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.

  • And the only forms of socialism in the world that were then getting results - malign ones, as it was - were the Fascist and Soviet republics. Fascism is a form of socialism - you rebuild the country, you find a scapegoat, and you go from there.

    Interview by Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 9, 2014.
  • I don't think I came out of anybody. I think I developed out of the influences I described in My Dark Places. American history, L.A. of the 1950s. I'm comfortable with that.

    Dark  
    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview by John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
  • I'm way past the idea of using ideology or political view as a gauge of human character. I simply don't believe it. And many people, I tend to think most people, feel that way. Since I don't have to worry about it, I'm happy.

    Interview with Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. September 9, 2010.
  • 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.

  • Joe Wambaugh's a friend. I know him only casually, but I like him a lot. I think he likes my books.

    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview with John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
  • I wanted things. Whatever it cost and whatever it took, I would do it. And that's it.

    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview with John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
  • Well, the clues are there. They always are. Which is why when crimes are solved decades after the fact, it's obvious that the clues had always been right in front of them. A traffic ticket in Brooklyn is how they got ["Son of Sam" serial killer] David Berkowitz. You've just got to look.

    Interview with Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 9, 2014.
  • 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.

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

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

    James Ellroy (2012). “Conversations with James Ellroy”, p.57, Univ. Press of Mississippi
  • 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 (2012). “Conversations with James Ellroy”, p.55, Univ. Press of Mississippi
  • I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

  • 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.

    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview by John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
  • [Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people.

    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview with John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
  • I don't have a cellphone or a computer. I deliberately circumscribe my mental life within the periods that I write about, and the power of Perfidia is that it's the result of complete immersion. I was there for the two years that it took me to write that book.

    Interview with Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 9, 2014.
  • 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.

    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview by John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
  • L.A. ispolluted. It's overpopulated. But it is very much home. It was inevitable for me, the moving back. I was living in San Francisco, and Joan broke it off with me, and I needed a place to live. I'd been divorced. And I needed to write movies and TV shows to earn a living. Alimony. All that. So I figured what the hell, I'll go back to L.A.

    Interview with Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 9, 2014.
  • Some people don’t respond to civility.

    James Ellroy (2011). “The Black Dahlia”, p.63, Random House
  • "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.

    Interview with Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 9, 2014.
  • 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.

    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview with John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
  • Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.

    "My Dark Places". Book by James Ellroy, 1996.
  • There are a lot of Ellroy lifts, man. This guy went to school. But then there's a willful thing that comes over me - God gives it to me - where I go, "That's real nice, let's just go home, pat yourself on the back, good dog, good dog, and wake up in the morning and go to work."

    Interview with Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 9, 2014.
  • I was in L.A. in '08. It was a cold Saturday night. I had spread my phone number out to a score of women and was just indulging this sweet, sad, elegiac, bale loneliness - don't tell me you haven't been there.

    Interview by Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 9, 2014.
  • 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.

  • 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.

    "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview with John Krewson, www.avclub.com. November 20, 1996.
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 99 quotes from the Crime writer James Ellroy, starting from March 4, 1948! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!