James Ellroy Book Quotes & Sayings

Lost children filled every chair at the headquarters of the Columbian Guard; nineteen spent the night and were claimed by their parents the next day. — Erik Larson

Your body is only clothing. Your flesh will wither, but you are your heart and mind, and they do not change except to grow stronger. — Robert Jordan

When I look at Perfidia, I think, "That's a Pulitzer Prize winner. That's a National Book Award winner." It's not going to get it. It's going to be shelved in crime and it's just the way it is. I've done something that no one else has ever done; I've started out as a mystery writer, a police writer, and a crime writer, and I became something entirely different. — James Ellroy

O the wind is a faun in the spring time
When the ways are green for the tread of the May!
List! hark his lay!
Whist! mark his play!
T-r-r-r-l!
Hear how gay! — Clinton Scollard

No one wants to hear my perspective on politics, but I think honestly as you get older, you get more interested in it. — Danica Patrick

Great enterprises usually promise vastly more than they perform. — Mark Twain

I don't have a cellphone or a computer. I deliberately circumscribe my mental life within the periods that I write about, and the power of Perfidia is that it's the result of complete immersion. I was there for the two years that it took me to write that book. — James Ellroy

I have insane curiosity as to what happened in all these events. I will never know. I'm not a researcher. I don't possess that kind of mind. I have a researcher who compiles the fact sheets and chronologies that allow me to write these big books of mine. — James Ellroy

I feel a lot healthier when I'm having sex. Physically. I feel all these jitters when I wake up in the morning. Just energy jitters. I take vitamins, I work out every day. When I'm having sex, I don't have that. — Alyssa Milano

After he finishes his song, I ask him, "Sir, were you just playing 'Lean on Me'?" "That's right!" he answers, thrilled. Now, whenever I think of Mudd and his house I hear that song, hear Mudd serenading the limping Booth, taking his arm and helping him up the stairs, singing, "Lean on me, when you're not strong, and I'll be your friend. — Sarah Vowell

The point of all of this is control. First you must have control of yourself. Then you can gain control of your surroundings. Then you gain control of whoever stands against you. This is the Lethani. — Patrick Rothfuss

History is a state of yearning. I yearn for Kay Lake throughout this entire thing. There's an essay I've written where I talked about living in the past. There's a whole motif in the book of then and now. And I lived there. — James Ellroy

Start thinking of yourself as an artist and your life as a work-in-progress. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

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

You're grounded!!!! You can't go out and prowl the L.A. streets. You've got to do something more edifying, emboldening and altogether more groovy. You gots to stay home tonite and read a good book!!!!!!!!!! — James Ellroy

We want to make America great again. We want to bring back our industry, we want to bring back our jobs from China and Japan, and by the way Mexico, which has taken so many of our jobs. And that's what it's about. I have not heard about these incidences. — Donald Trump

You are really angry with me for not having appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched wings — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I've always thought hard-boiled detective novels an American art form. At their best, they're more than who-dun-its or thrillers, they're vehicles for a writer's observations about culture, politics, philosophy, music, history and a time or a place. Or life, it's ownself. When you read James Ellroy, Dashiell Hammett or James Lee Burke, their stories are always about far more than good guys chasing bad guys. That's the kind of book I wanted to write. Still do. — Jim Nesbitt

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

In the first book I shall describe all the positions of the spheres, along with the motions which I attribute to the Earth, so that the book will contain as it were the general structure of the universe. In the remaining books I relate the motions of the remaining stars, and all the spheres, to the mobility of the Earth, so that it can be thence established how far the motions and appearances of the remaining stars and spheres can be saved, if they are referred to the motions of the Earth. — Nicolaus Copernicus

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

Dear FB Friends,
Fuck Facebook!!!!! - It has proven to be worthless as a book-selling device, and is nothing but a repository for perverts, reparation-seekers, old buddies looking for handouts, syphillitic ex-girlfriends looking for extra-curricular schlong and hack writers begging for blurbs. — James Ellroy