Quotes from James Ellroy

He wore piss-poor lime cologne. He sucked a hide-the-hooch lozenge.

I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.

J. J. Cantwell said, "We're three Catholic men relieved of our duties. We're going to get shit-faced drunk and defame the Prottys and the kikes." Parker ushered them in. His Eminence was sixty-six and rambunctious. Dudley doted on him. They met in Ireland, circa 1919. Dudley killed British soldiers. Cantwell funneled gun money.

I wear obsession well, I've turned it into something.

But I tell you, I did some real fretting, and honestly, if it hadn't been for the fact that God and I parted company so long ago, I might have even been sap enough to pray for him.

There can be no genial companionship among great egotists who have drunk too much.

Gambling was a chickenshit obsession. The big thrill was the risk of self-annihilation and the shot at transcendence through money. Sex obsession was love six times or six thousand times removed. Both compulsions mortified. Both compulsions destroyed. Gambling was always about self-abnegation and money. Sex was a stupid glandular disposition and sometimes the route to big bad love.

Memory is a mirage that fools the heart . . .

Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years' experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience—twenty times.

Post hoc, propter ergo hoc. After this, because of this.

He kept his extralegal shit there. Throwdown guns, burglars' tools, maryjane to plant on suspects.

Matsura dribbled blood on the table. Ace threw a head shot. Matsura screamed. Gold bridgework flew.

The Latin inscription on the Pall Mall cigarette pack—"In Hoc Signo Vinces"—translated as "With this sign we shall conquer"—was a tentative means of homo identification

I had to talk to people. All people scared me.

I was terrified because the good guys were really the bad guys.

there is no end to the cancerous seeds of treason that well-placed movie Reds could plant—subtle satires and attacks on America, subliminally planted so that the public and right-thinking movie people would have no idea they were being brainwashed.

Qualifications don't count. All Ike did was invade Europe and look like your uncle.

Padre Divino, concedimi una tregua. Accetta la mia fraudolenta rettitudine. Revoca l'arroganza che mi lega agli intrighi di altri e mi conduce verso orridi errori e unioni sbagliate. Tempera la mia ambizione con la Tua grazia, Signore.

Elmer was scared. He ran a call-girl ring. He peddled flesh to the L.A. elite. He made biz calls from the Vice squadroom.

and they got a 459 thing going.

These tracts are inherently unradical and fail to critique the systematic bigotry that has fueled this counteraggression for the past two horrible days. This cravenly jingoistic display of yours is an insufficient response to the injustice currently being perpetrated on this very street.

Treason is ideology and free speech perverted. Seditious thought and its reckless public expression is a grave criminal offense that fully sanctions me in this action that you allege to be precipitous, presumptuous and subversive in and of itself, so help me fucking God, I know it to be true.

Calculating psychopaths don't shit where they eat.

He said that only stupid men love danger, but you love danger and you're not stupid.