The Best American Noir of the Century Quotes

“Like art, love, and pornography, noir is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For the purposes of the book and my longtime working understanding and definition of it, noir stories are bleak, existential, alienated, pessimistic tales about losers--people who are so morally challenged that they cannot help but bring about their own ruin.”
― Otto Penzler, The Best American Noir of the Century

“Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.”
― Jim Thompson, The Best American Noir of the Century

“The overarching joy and lasting appeal of noir is that it makes doom fun.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“If it would’ve been me, I would’ve left Hutch out of it. ’Cause Hutch, he was mean.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“succeedat a”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“As far as I could tell, there were basically three kinds of people, the ones who deceived others, the ones who deceived themselves, and the ones who understood that the people in the first two categories were the only ones they were ever likely to meet.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“If you find light and hilarity in these pages, I strongly recommend a visit to a mental health professional. Otto Penzler”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“Noir works, whether films, novels, or short stories, are existential, pessimistic tales about people, including(or especially) protagonists, who are seriously flawed and morally questionable.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“eunuch’s tit—”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“But he listed Wayne’s blinding as unsolved. The snake venom had bleached his pupils white, and the skin around his eye sockets had required grafts. The doctors had had to use skin from his buttocks, and because his buttocks were hairy, the skin around his eyes grew hair, too.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“It’s tough being a dangerous old man by yourself—you’ve got nothing but memories and no one with the balls to understand them.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“The thrill of noir is the rush of moral forfeit and the abandonment to titillation. The social importance of noir is its grounding in the big themes of race, class, gender, and systemic corruption. The overarching joy and lasting appeal of noir is that it makes doom fun.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“Cheap novels and cheap films about cheap people ran concurrent with American boosterism and yahooism and made a subversive point just by being. They described a fully existing fringe America and fed viewers and readers the demography of a Secret Pervert Republic. It was just garish enough to be laughed off as unreal and just pathetic enough to be recognizably human.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“But I tell you, I did some real fretting, and honestly, if it hadn’t been for the fact that God and I parted company so long ago, I might have even been sap enough to pray for him.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years’ experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience—twenty times.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“Memory is a mirage that fools the heart . . .”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“There can be no genial companionship among great egotists who have drunk too much.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century

“Most tipping hands brushed or hovered, seeking a partial return on their investment.”
― James Ellroy, The Best American Noir of the Century