Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.
As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me.
As critical acclaim and response has built up, every interview I give is a chance to puncture the myth I've created about my work and refine it.
As much as I transferred my mother to Elizabeth Shore of The Black Dahlia, as much as her dad mutated into an obsession with crime in general, well, I have thought about other things throughout the years.
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.
I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.
I am conservative by temperament. I disapprove of criminal activity. I am very solidly and markedly on the side of authority. The truth is I would rather err on the side of too much authority than too little.
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.
I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.
I feel very calm and poised underneath it all, but no less passionate or committed to the work. I won't go soft on you, but I feel calm inside.
I have a very intense marriage.
I haven't been to a movie in a year and a half.
I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.
I love thinking about American history, thinking about LA history. I love brooding on crime.
I put on such a good show, the story is outrageous, and people don't want to hear that I'm basically a reasonable human being. As long as it continues to get me print, I'll continue to perform in an exuberant manner.
I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity.
I want to show the eroticism of monogamy. It's very easy to show a man and woman when they first get together, but showing them together for the long haul is something else entirely, and I very much want to show that.
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.
I would like to provoke ambiguous responses in my readers.
I'm clenched down, I'm locked in on it, which is my general approach to life.
I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.
I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books.
It was interesting to write directly about what things meant to me. A lot of the art of writing novels is in telling things by implication.
It's my world, it's a very stylized world, it's the secret world that coexists within the outwardly more placid outer world that I actually live in, that you live in.
My first novel, Brown's Requiem, was very heavily indebted to Raymond Chandler. He was an influence, but one that I've had an apostatsy regarding.
My mother and I will continue on some level that I haven't determined yet. I think my mother's a great character, and I have to say that giving my mother to the world has to be the biggest thrill of my writing career.
Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist.
Raymond Chandler is not a guy that I admire any more. I think his books are softheaded and full of bad writing.
Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it.
Rock and rollers can get you the youth buzz, and younger people are fanatical readers.
The books that I have written that feature real-life characters are all reviewed by the legal departments of my publishers.
The real-life characters that I use in my books are all dead or I wouldn't be able to use them. I would be liable.
The truth of the matter is, you lose a parent to murder when you're 10 years old, and in fact at the time of the murder you hate your lost parent, my mother in my case.
When I was a kid, Eisenhower had been President forever, and all of a sudden, everything in the world was all about Jack Kennedy. I was 12, interested in politics; my father was from Massachusetts, had an accent like Kennedy.
Ellroy: I don't know anybody in the underworld. I make this stuff up. I don't know any criminals.
Ellroy: As a kid, I sensed history going on all around me, but the basic thrust of it didn't move me.
Ellroy said the book The Badge written by Jack Webb and published in 1958 encouraged him to begin writing crime fiction.
Ellroy currently resides in the Kansas City area with his wife.
Ellroy spent several years as a homeless vagrant during his late teens.
Ellroy is 6 feet, 3 inches tall.
Ellroy received a psychiatric discharge from the Army after serving only three months.
Ellroy attended high school in the Fairfax section of Los Angeles.
Ellroy's parents divorced when he was six years old.
Ellroy is married to writer Helen Knode.
Ellroy wrote about his life and his mother's murder in My Dark Places published in 1996.
Ellroy opposes the death penalty.
Ellroy is a recovering alcoholic.
Ellroy is nicknamed the "Demon Dog of American crime fiction."
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