Quotes from James Ellroy

Bergen, and Oldfield. The

Those we understand are those we control.

blue eyes so light that it looked like she sent them out to be bleached

Canned shtick—Pete gleeful: 'The left one's the hospital, the right one's death. The right one steals your life while the left steals your breath. These hands are bad juju and the bad boogaloo, they're the teeth of the demon as he slides down the flue.

The bombastic bushy-bearded beatnik bard promised land reforms, social justice and pickled plantains on every plate—the standard stipends of welfare-waffled Commie commissars.

I saw crime everywhere. Crime was not isolated incidents destined for ultimate solution and adjudication. Crime was the continual circumstance. It was all day, every day. The ramifications extended to the 12th of Never. This is a policeman's view of crime. I did not know it then.

I do three weeks at the Hall of Justice Jail. It's a potent crime primer. I'm the geek that all the pro thugs disdain. I observe them up close. It's the '60s. It's social-grievance-as-justification-for-bad-actions time. My cellmates have sadness raps down. I gain a notch on my crime-as-continuing-circumstance notion. Crime is large-scale individual moral default. That means you, motherfucker.

Serial killers were hopped-up eyeball fuckers and ravaged inner children. They were scary in the moment and as dismissible as an empty box of popcorn.

Twenty-nine years old and on her third masters degree because she's afraid to go out and meet the world. Sad, isn't it?" Mal sighed. "Tragic.

I am best served in my life's goals if I lay in the dark, brood, sleep, listen to classical music, spend time with my few friends, and chase women. That's what I do. I chase women. I spend time with my few friends. I brood. I sleep. I earn money, and I work.

It was written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice—

Claire De Haven and the company cared for the plight of the world. Claire De Haven and the company extolled tyrants and lived for adversarial cliché.

Achtung, motherfuckers. And good afternoon. I'm James Ellroy; the death dog with the hog log, the white knight of the far right, and the slick trick with the donkey dick. I am the author of eighteen books, masterpieces all; they precede all my future masterpieces. They are books for the whole fucking family, if the name of your family is the Manson family.

Yes, my friends—it's becoming Jewniversally apparent.

All I have is withering perception. Women write diaries in the hope that their words will beckon fate.

The driver drove by roadway Braille

So many wicked ways to scandal-skin a cat.

Lose thirty pounds within the next thirty days, or I'll have Chief Horrall put you on the 'Fat Husband's Diet' recently extolled in the Ladies' Home Journal.

Looking back, I know that the man possessed no gift of prophecy; he simply worked to assure his own future, while I skated uncertainly toward mine. It was his flat-voiced Cherchez la femme that still haunts me. Because our partnership was nothing but a bungling road to the Dahlia. And in the end, she was to own the two of us completely.

I loved men and was going mad with suppressed desire. It pushed me into a series of affairs with dubious jazz musicians. Sex was not what I imagined. It was tension, scent and prosaic misalliance. It was sweet and sad revelation, and all expectation dashed.

I had chewed a big steak two hours before, swallowing the juice and spitting out the meat, and I could smell animal blood in my sweat.

I got an emergency leave. I visited my dad on his deathbed. His last words to me: "Try to pick up every waitress who serves you.

There is no proportion. Pearl Harbor took care of that.

There's a trick to lying. Hold to the same line, regardless of who you're with.