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Closure is a preposterous concept worthy of the worst aspects of American daytime TV.

James Ellroy

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James Ellroy
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 4
Autobiographer
Crime Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Worst
Preposterous
American
Closure
Daytime
Aspects
Concept
Worthy
Concepts
Aspect

More quotes by James Ellroy

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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.
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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
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I begin by assembling notes on characters. Large swaths of the plot become clear to me as I do this.
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I needed to address that I've had some profound moral shifts in my own life.
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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.
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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
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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
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If I wanted to make money I would have written another novel.
James Ellroy
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I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.
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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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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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
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Rock and rollers can get you the youth buzz, and younger people are fanatical readers.
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 want to have enough data, so I won't write myself into thin air, so that I can extrapolate and give you this secret human infrastructure. The only way I sate my own curiosity is to create this from scratch. There must be commanding love stories. There must be great moral cost.
James Ellroy
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I cleaned up. I quit drinking, I quit doing drugs, I quit stealing, I quit breaking into houses, I tried to quit being a bad human being. I developed a conscience later in life than many. I call it the lost-time-regained dynamic.
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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You get up in the morning because you might meet a woman. And if you stay at home by yourself, alone, you will not meet a woman.
James Ellroy
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I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.
James Ellroy
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I learn things late-and only the hard way.
James Ellroy