James Ellroy Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• 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

• 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

• Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.

  James Ellroy

  Dog, Writing, Cat

• 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 first time ever. I feel like I've confronted her, and the confrontation goes on.

  James Ellroy

  Mother, Book, Writing

  Source: www.avclub.com

• 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.

  James Ellroy

  Book, Writing, Years

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

• How did I change my life? I wanted things. I wanted women and I wanted to write books.

  James Ellroy

  Book, Writing, Changing My Life

  "The Onion talks to crime-fiction kingpin James Ellroy". Interview with 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.

  James Ellroy

  Moving, Home, Writing

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

• The 250-page outline for American Tabloid. The books are so dense. They're so complex, you cannot write like I write off the top of your head. It's the combination of that meticulousness and the power of the prose and, I think, the depth of the characterizations and the risks that I've taken with language that give the books their clout. And that's where I get pissed off at a lot of my younger readers.

  James Ellroy

  Book, Taken, Writing

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

• I have insane curiosity as to what happened in all these events. I will never know. I'm not a researcher. I don't possess that kind of mind. I have a researcher who compiles the fact sheets and chronologies that allow me to write these big books of mine.

  James Ellroy

  Book, Writing, Curiosity

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

• [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

  Writing, Thinking, People

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

• I want to have enough data, so I won't write myself into thin air, so that I can extrapolate and give you this secret human infrastructure. The only way I sate my own curiosity is to create this from scratch. There must be commanding love stories. There must be great moral cost.

  James Ellroy

  Writing, Air, Data

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

• I don't think I will write anything that could be even remotely considered a genre novel from this point on. I think I've graduated.

  James Ellroy

  Writing, Thinking, Genre

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

• The novel is final form; it's the ultimate individual final form. Television and motion pictures never get there. You'd be fabulous to think that something you write is even going to be filmed. I give it the best shot of which I'm capable. But it's more a payday for me. And if I didn't have alimony and the full-time assistant.

  James Ellroy

  Writing, Thinking, Giving

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

• You try to learn who you are. You work hard. You've either got it or you don't when it comes to writing books. And you tend to only get these things if you want them, and want them to the exclusion of everything else.

  James Ellroy

  Book, Hard Work, Writing

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

• 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

  James Ellroy (2012). “Conversations with James Ellroy”, p.55, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• "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.

  James Ellroy

  War, Writing, Fate

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

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