192 Quotes by James Ellroy

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.

I am the most well-adjusted human being I know. I started out this investigation as a very happy man with a great career. I’ve got the life people dream about: I am rich, I am famous, I’ve got a fabulous marriage to an absolutely, spell-bindingly brilliant woman.

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.

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.

There’s none with me, although you’ve seen me before – I’m outrageous.

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.

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.

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

Sometimes I’ll leave the house and go to a delicatessen down the street from me – it’s been there a million years – just because I can look at people.