James Ellroy > Quotes

“Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.”
― James Ellroy

“America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.”
― James Ellroy

“To me, there's nothing on earth other than women. It's why I get out of bed every morning.”
― James Ellroy

“It was easy not to think of my future; I didn't have one.”
― James Ellroy

“Dear FB Friends,
Fuck Facebook!!!!! — It has proven to be worthless as a book-selling device, and is nothing but a repository for perverts, reparation-seekers, old buddies looking for handouts, syphillitic ex-girlfriends looking for extra-curricular schlong and hack writers begging for blurbs.”
― James Ellroy

“I am the son of a murdered woman—anybody who'd call my books misogynistic is, frankly, out of their fucking mind.
”
― James Ellroy

“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 envy the blood on your conscience.”
― James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential

“Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.”
― James Ellroy, My Dark Places

“My dad was always snoozing on the couch, like Dagwood Bumstead. He was a lazy motherfucker. God bless him. He was always working on some kind of get-rich-quick scheme. This is what my dad was like: I'd say, Hey, Dad, we studied penguins today in school. He'd say, Yeah? I'm a penguin fucker from way back. Dad, I saw a giraffe at the zoo today. Yeah? I'm a giraffe fucker from way back. That's my dad. My dad was a giraffe fucker.”
― James Ellroy

“Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good? ”
― James Ellroy, Blood's a Rover

“Downtown, a dress for Meg- I do it every time I kill a man.”
― James Ellroy

“The left one's the hospital, the right one's death. The right one steals your life while the left steals your breath. These hands are bad juju and the bad boogaloo, they're the teeth of the demon as he slides down the flue.”
― James Ellroy

“I learn things late-and only the hard way.”
― James Ellroy, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

“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, My Dark Places

“There's a kid or some kids somewhere. I'll never know them. They're particle-puzzle-cubing right now. They might be mini-misanthropes from Moosefart, Montana. They might be demi-dystopians from Dogdick, Delaware. They dig my demonic dramas. The metaphysic maims them. They grasp the gravity. They'll duke it out with their demons. They'll serve a surfeit of survival skills. They won't be chronologically crucified.

They'll shore up my shit. They'll radically revise it. They'll pass it along.”
― James Ellroy, Destination: Morgue!

“America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.
The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab.
Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall.
They were rouge cops and shakedown artist. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it.
It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define there time.
Here's to them.”
― James Ellroy, American Tabloid

“Some people don’t respond to civility.”
― James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia

“We burned down rooms. We knew what everything meant. We understood terror and fury as no one else had. It hurt to be together and hurt more to be apart. Our mouths clashed. Our teeth scraped. Our arms ached from the meld. We knew each other's smells and heard each other's voices and told each other things that no one else ever had.”
― James Ellroy

“America:
I window-peeped four years of our History. It was one long mobile stakeout and kick- the-door-in shakedown. I had a license to steal and a ticket to ride.
I followed people. I bugged and tapped and caught big events in ellipses. I remained unknown. My surveillance links the Then to the Now in a never-before-revealed manner. I was there. My reportage is buttressed by credible hearsay and insider tattle. Massive paper trails provide verification. This book derives from stolen public files and usurped private journals. It is the sum of personal adventure and forty years of scholarship. I am a literary executor and an agent provocateur. I did what I did and saw and I saw and learned my way through to the rest of the story.
Scripture-pure veracity and and scandal-rag content. That conjunction gives it its sizzle. You carry the seed and of belief within you already. You recall the time this narrative captures and sense conspiracy. I am here to tell you that it is all true and not all what you think.
You will read with some reluctance and capitulate in the end. The following pages will force you to succumb.
I am going to tell you everything.”
― James Ellroy

“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?”

“To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history.”

“I like a woman who knows what she wants.”

Kay smiled. “So do I, but I don’t know any.”
― James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia

“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, The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

“Call me Dudley. We're of equal rank. I'm older, but you're far better looking. I can tell we're going to be grand partners.”
― James Ellroy, The Big Nowhere