Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

James Ellroy
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: March 4
Autobiographer
Crime Writer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Influence
Came
Dark
Influences
American
Described
History
Developed
Think
Places
Thinking
Anybody
Comfortable

More quotes by James Ellroy

Image
I learn things late-and only the hard way.
James Ellroy
Image
I kept saying, Stop me now. It's going to my head. I got some photos. Really, I did! It's not my noblest sexual self in these moments, but I want to have fun. I want to undress. I get off my leash to go out and perform. Some other writers are just discomforted by the way I behave in public. Because they're loath to perform.
James Ellroy
Image
I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.
James Ellroy
Image
I needed to address that I've had some profound moral shifts in my own life.
James Ellroy
Image
America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
James Ellroy
Image
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
Image
Closure is a preposterous concept worthy of the worst aspects of American daytime TV.
James Ellroy
Image
I always cringe when a male friend of mine, who's very fixated on women, puts compatibility at the top of his list of attributes that he would be looking for in a woman. I would replace compatibility with dialectic.
James Ellroy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I almost had an intransigent mental spirit. I always wanted things.
James Ellroy
Image
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
Image
L.A.: Come on vacation, go home on probation.
James Ellroy
Image
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
Image
I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.
James Ellroy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I like to have fun out there. I work hard, and then I get to cut loose and go out and tour, and I enjoy it. I like to go out and meet the people. I love to sell books.
James Ellroy