James Ellroy Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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.

  10 Copy quote

• "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.

  5 Copy quote

• I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.

  James Ellroy

  Criminals, Stuff, Underworld

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  7 Copy quote

• And you love to read, you love to escape, right?

  James Ellroy

  Love To Read

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

  6 Copy quote

• I don't feel in any way obligated to remain current with the culture. I feel no social obligation whatsoever. I trust my morality in the narrow path I trek through the world as I work.

  James Ellroy

  Culture, World, Way

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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• My guys are morally weak, and they reach toward a tenuous knowledge of self-sacrifice, and sometimes it's too late. I find that moving. It's not a life I'd want to live. But, then, I'm not completely my books.

  James Ellroy

  Moving, Book, Sacrifice

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

  5 Copy quote

• She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.

  James Ellroy

  Past, Self, Missing

  5 Copy quote

• My role relationship to the event will continue to mutate. My relationship to my mother will continue to change as I revise my judgments of her depending on what I learn about her. It goes on. But I feel no less obsessive about my work and no less passionately committed to the life I have now, but I feel poised inside. Which is a good thing to feel at 48.

  James Ellroy

  Mother, Events, Roles

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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• I don't have children. I serve the world and I serve God by living as deep within my work as I can, reveling in the language of other times and putting it forth for the world.

  James Ellroy

  Children, World, Language

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

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Ellroy

  Sweet, Loneliness, Night

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

  7 Copy quote

• It's all sex for me. Politics is sex. Race is sex. It's the novel. It's the novel!

  James Ellroy

  Sex, Race, Novel

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

  4 Copy quote

• 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."

  James Ellroy

  Dog, Morning, Real

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

  4 Copy quote

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

  James Ellroy

  Book, Thinking, Likes

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

  5 Copy quote

• I almost had an intransigent mental spirit. I always wanted things.

  James Ellroy

  Spirit, Wanted

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

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Ellroy

  Believe, Character, Past

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

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

• We do. Or re-create the ones we have, and project. My whole life is projection.

  James Ellroy

  Life Is, Projects, Whole Life

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

  5 Copy quote

• Sometimes I'll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me - it's been there a million years - just because I can look at people.

  James Ellroy

  Years, People, House

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

  4 Copy quote

• If I wanted to make money I would have written another novel.

  James Ellroy

  Making Money, Novel, Wanted

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

  5 Copy quote

• I'm not interested in popular culture. I hate Quentin Tarantino. I rarely go to movies. I hate rock 'n' roll. I work. I think. I listen to classical music. I brood. I like sports cars.

  James Ellroy

  Sports, Hate, Thinking

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

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Taken, Simple, Thinking

  James Ellroy (2012). “Conversations with James Ellroy”, p.54, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  8 Copy quote

• Classical music fulfills for me the function of narrative. I spend 90 minutes a day listening to symphonic music - Beethoven to Bartók - some chamber pieces, and that's my enrichment.

  James Ellroy

  Listening, Pieces, Narrative

  Interview by Keith Phipps, www.avclub.com. September 9, 2010.

  5 Copy quote

Page 2 of 4

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin