Top 90 James Ellroy Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “You’d be better served taxing your conscience for those who deserve your regret.”

— James Ellroy

52. “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

53. “Breuning drove. Dudley sat up front Carlisle sat in back, with three sawed-off shotguns.”

— James Ellroy

54. “I wanted to portray a newly democratized, enclosed society. I wanted to show how extraordinarily fluid people are in their embrace of other human beings.”

— James Ellroy

55. “I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.”

— James Ellroy

56. “I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.”

— James Ellroy

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

— James Ellroy

58. “Every one of my books is written from the viewpoint of cops, with the exception of my book Killer on the Road, which is written from the viewpoint of a serial killer.”

— James Ellroy

59. “They were heedless of the fact that they’d gain more converts if they just stopped talking.”

— James Ellroy

60. “I was a WASP kid going to a high school that was 99 percent Jewish and I wanted attention and I wanted to make a spectacle of myself because I couldn’t stand to be ignored.”

— James Ellroy

61. “There’s a beast in me. I destroy those I cannot control. I must be certain that those close to me share my identical interests. I’m benevolent within that construction. I’m ghastly outside of it.”

— James Ellroy

62. “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

63. “Lose thirty pounds within the next thirty days, or I’ll have Chief Horrall put you on the ‘Fat Husband’s Diet’ recently extolled in the Ladies’ Home Journal.”

— James Ellroy

64. “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

65. “Periodically I just notch up. And everyone among my colleagues thinks that Perfidia – in its accessibility, its big throbbing heart – will be the biggest notch up yet. We’ll see what happens. It’s on my ass.”

— James Ellroy

66. “I work within the framework of a very concerted, purely driven Protestant Christian mindset. I had dark early circumstances. I went inward. I have a sturdy will. I have a big heart. I’m a decent guy. And I have a great gift. It’s blunted me to the world in many ways.”

— James Ellroy

67. “All I have is withering perception. Women write diaries in the hope that their words will beckon fate.”

— James Ellroy

68. “Future writers hide inside books and snort up the craft by enjoyment. They read and learn structure and style. Their curiosity points them to subject matter.”

— James Ellroy

69. “She’s good to common folk. They make her feel authentic. She covets their approval in small doses.”

— James Ellroy

70. “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

71. “The Latin inscription on the Pall Mall cigarette pack – “In Hoc Signo Vinces” – translated as “With this sign we shall conquer” – was a tentative means of homo identification.”

— James Ellroy

72. “Those we understand are those we control.”

— James Ellroy

73. “They moved me and scared me. I replayed the tapes and nailed the source of my fear. The women sounded smug. They were entrenched and content in their victimhood.”

— James Ellroy

74. “The driver drove by roadway Braille.”

— James Ellroy

75. “If it would’ve been me, I would’ve left Hutch out of it. ‘Cause Hutch, he was mean.”

— James Ellroy

76. “So many wicked ways to scandal-skin a cat.”

— James Ellroy

77. “Twenty-nine years old and on her third masters degree because she’s afraid to go out and meet the world. Sad, isn’t it?” Mal sighed. “Tragic.”

— James Ellroy

78. “There’s none with me, although you’ve seen me before – I’m outrageous.”

— James Ellroy

79. “I didn’t know that costs accrue. I didn’t know that you always pay for what you suppress.”

— James Ellroy

80. “I’m getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.”

— James Ellroy

81. “As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn’t move me.”

— James Ellroy

82. “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

83. “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

84. “Cab drivers are night-riding denizens of the first order. They view wretched foibles from a gutter perspective.”

— James Ellroy

85. “I told lies and wondered where I would go if my own past was all I had left.”

— James Ellroy

86. “I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.”

— James Ellroy

87. “All I want to do is make serious movies that explore social issues and turn a profit, and slip the schnitzel to Jane DePugh.”

— James Ellroy

88. “Bergen, and Oldfield. The.”

— James Ellroy

89. “Yes, my friends – it’s becoming Jewniversally apparent.”

— James Ellroy

90. “There’s a trick to lying. Hold to the same line, regardless of who you’re with.”

— James Ellroy

91. “Other people, some other writers, will win certain accolades or sell in far greater numbers than me – and I’m a legitimate best-selling author – but I live and die for the work. That’s thrilling to me. It’s thrilling that I do for others what certain writers did for me when I was a kid.”

— James Ellroy

92. “He felt sandbagged. Doomsday, Armageddon. Booze begets instant misconduct and regret. He walked to the couch and fell down.”

— James Ellroy

93. “The bombastic bushy-bearded beatnik bard promised land reforms, social justice and pickled plantains on every plate – the standard stipends of welfare-waffled Commie commissars.”

— James Ellroy

94. “It was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice –.”

— James Ellroy