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Cats gotta scratch. Dogs gotta bite. I gotta write.
James Ellroy
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James Ellroy
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 4
Autobiographer
Crime Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Writing
Bite
Bites
Cats
Gotta
Dogs
Cat
Dog
Scratch
Write
Scratches
More quotes by James Ellroy
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
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
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
I'm grateful for the life I have. I lived bad for many years, and I've got a great life now. I've got the kind of life people only dream about.
James Ellroy
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
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
We do. Or re-create the ones we have, and project. My whole life is projection.
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
There's none with me, although you've seen me before - I'm outrageous.
James Ellroy
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
The novel is final form it's the ultimate individual final form. Television and motion pictures never get there. You'd be fabulous to think that something you write is even going to be filmed. I give it the best shot of which I'm capable. But it's more a payday for me. And if I didn't have alimony and the full-time assistant.
James Ellroy
Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.
James Ellroy
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
If I wanted to make money I would have written another novel.
James Ellroy
I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.
James Ellroy
The wildest ride in modern crime novel exoticum. A novel so steeped in milieu that it feels as if you've blasted to mars in the grip of a demon who won't let you go. Read this book, savor the language-it's the last-and the most compelling word in thrillers.
James Ellroy
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
Closure is a preposterous concept worthy of the worst aspects of American daytime TV.
James Ellroy
I don't think I came out of anybody. I think I developed out of the influences I described in My Dark Places. American history, L.A. of the 1950s. I'm comfortable with that.
James Ellroy
I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.
James Ellroy
