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I learn things late-and only the hard way.

James Ellroy

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James Ellroy
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 4
Autobiographer
Crime Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Learn
Hard
Way
Things
Late

More quotes by James Ellroy

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I am conservative by temperament. I disapprove of criminal activity. I am very solidly and markedly on the side of authority. The truth is I would rather err on the side of too much authority than too little.
James Ellroy
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As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me.
James Ellroy
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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
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I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.
James Ellroy
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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
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Joe Wambaugh's a friend. I know him only casually, but I like him a lot. I think he likes my books.
James Ellroy
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Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.
James Ellroy
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I think I'm out of crime fiction now, and I think the dividing line is American Tabloid.
James Ellroy
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I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime novelist who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian novel and what Beethoven is to music.
James Ellroy
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Closure is a preposterous concept worthy of the worst aspects of American daytime TV.
James Ellroy
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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
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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
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Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.
James Ellroy
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And the only forms of socialism in the world that were then getting results - malign ones, as it was - were the Fascist and Soviet republics. Fascism is a form of socialism - you rebuild the country, you find a scapegoat, and you go from there.
James Ellroy
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I'm trying to be less bombastic. I love my books. I think I've done things nobody else has done.
James Ellroy
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I almost had an intransigent mental spirit. I always wanted things.
James Ellroy
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There's none with me, although you've seen me before - I'm outrageous.
James Ellroy
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I got a woman I'm loyal to above all things, above my career. She's profound to me. I'm quiet. I live in Kansas City. I work.
James Ellroy
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I'd never been interested in the Kennedy assassination until '88, when I read Libra. And from that point, I went out and bought the existing Kennedy theory books, most of which are outlandish. But what DeLillo posits - some rogue CIA guys - is the most dramatically sound, plausible explanation for it.
James Ellroy
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L.A.: Come on vacation, go home on probation.
James Ellroy