Quotes from James Ellroy

He felt sandbagged. Doomsday, Armageddon. Booze begets instant misconduct and regret. He walked to the couch and fell down.

You'd be better served taxing your conscience for those who deserve your regret.

Sometimes I felt connections begging to be made, sometimes I cursed myself for not having ten percent more gray matter, sometimes the report carbons just made me think of Lee.

Silverlake-Echo was several miles due est of Mount lee, a hilly area with lots of twisting streets, greenery and seclusion, the kind of terrain a necrophiliac might find soothing.

All I want to do is make serious movies that explore social issues and turn a profit, and slip the schnitzel to Jane DePugh.

Scripture-pure veracity and scandal-rag content. That conjunction gives it its sizzle. You carry the seed of belief within you already. You recall the time this narrative captures and sense conspiracy. I am here to tell you that it is all true and not at all what you think. You will read with some reluctance and capitulate in the end. The following pages will force you to succumb. I am going to tell you everything.

I indulge prayer when the world seems incomprehensible and only a plea to the incomprehensible makes sense.

I'm saying it's so big and audacious that we'll most likely never be suspected. I'm saying that even if we are, the powers that be will realize that it can never be conclusively proven. I'm saying that a consensus of denial will build off of it. I'm saying that people will want to remember the man as something he wasn't. I'm saying that we'll present them with an explanation and the powers that be will prefer it to the truth, even though they know better. Marcello said, Do it. Make it happen

I told lies and wondered where I would go if my own past was all I had left.

Books and I went back. My old man taught me to read at age three-and-a-half. I bloomed into a classic only child/child-of-divorce autodidact.

Pulling away, I realized I had no place to go and nothing I wanted to do except satisfy my curiosity about a woman who was coming on like gangbusters and a big load of grief.

I didn't know that costs accrue. I didn't know that you always pay for what you suppress.

They moved me and scared me. I replayed the tapes and nailed the source of my fear. The women sounded smug. They were entrenched and content in their victimhood.

Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona.

Howard got sex-crazy in the winter and probably wanted to send him out on a poontang prowl: Schwab's Drugstore, the extra huts at Fox and Universal, Brownie snapshots of well-lunged girls naked from the waist up. His Majesty's yes or no, then standard gash contracts to the yes's--one-liners in RKO turkeys in exchange for room and board at Hughes Enterprises' fuck pads and frequent nighttime visits from The Man himself.

Cab drivers are night-riding denizens of the first order. They view wretched foibles from a gutter perspective.

I settled in to watch a Dragnet rerun. I bought the judge in four of Jack Webb's drunk-driving beefs. I shtupped Jack's ex-wife, soaring songstress Julie London.

Breuning drove. Dudley sat up front Carlisle sat in back, with three sawed-off shotguns.

I want to burn down the distance between us>

Fear and I played peek-a-boo - it always seemed to grab my balls and twist just when it felt like something inside me could banish all the bullshit forever.

The overarching joy and lasting appeal of noir is that it makes doom fun.

Future writers hide inside books and snort up the craft by enjoyment. They read and learn structure and style. Their curiosity points them to subject matter.

If it would've been me, I would've left Hutch out of it. 'Cause Hutch, he was mean.

She's good to common folk. They make her feel authentic. She covets their approval in small doses.