James ellroy Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Author: James Ellroy
Quotes of Author: James Ellroy

James Ellroy _ The Best American Crime
I roamed L.A. by night. I got repeatedly rousted by LAPD. I sensed that a cop-street fool compact existed. I behaved accordingly. I denied all criminal intent. I acted respectfully. My height-to-weight ratio and unhygienic appearance caused some cops to taunt me. I sparred back. Street schtick often ensued. I mimicked jailhouse jigs like some WASP Richard Pryor. Rousts turned into streetside yukfests. They played like Jack Webb unhinged. I started to dig the LAPD. I started to grok cop humor. I couldn't quite peg it as performance art. I hadn't read Joseph Wambaugh yet.
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James Ellroy _ American Tabloid
America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight.The real Trinity of Camelot was Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid. Jack Kennedy was the mythological front man for a particularly juicy slice of our history. He called a slick line and wore a world-class haircut. He was Bill Clinton minus pervasive media scrutiny and a few rolls of flab.Jack got whacked at the optimum moment to assure his sainthood. Lies continue to swirl around his eternal flame. It's time to dislodge his urn and cast light on a few men who attended his ascent and facilitated his fall.They were rouge cops and shakedown artist. They were wiretappers and soldiers of fortune and faggot lounge entertainers. Had one second of their lives deviated off course, American History would not exist as we know it.It's time to demythologize an era and build a new myth from the gutter to the stars. It's time to embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define there time.Here's to them.
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James Ellroy _ American Tabloid
Facts can be bent to conform to any thesis.
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James Ellroy _ This Storm
The incumbent Sheriff, "Kickback" Kit Denkins, was a notorious no-goodnik. He took bribes from crooked building contractors and solicited high school girls for their soiled underwear.
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James Ellroy _ Perfidia
A key-in-lock noise jarred him. He walked into the living room. Mariko had 11:00 a.m. booze breath. He said, "Hello, Mother." She spoke slurred Japanese back. He bowed and tried to take her hand. She pulled away and flashed a magazine. A "picture bride" rag. Choose a photograph and send for a young woman. She'll be shipped from Japan. Include the five-hundred-dollar steamship fare. All brides guaranteed to be fertile and subservient. "I've told you, Mother. I'm not going to marry a fifteen-year-old girl out of a brothel." "You too old to be bachelor. Neighbors get suspicious.
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James Ellroy _ Perfidia
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.
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James Ellroy _ Perfidia
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.
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James Ellroy _ This Storm
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.
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James Ellroy _ The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit
I had to talk to people. All people scared me.
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James Ellroy _ Perfidia
Cantwell said, "We'll have to have Bill explain this new war to us, Dud. Father Coughlin lays the blame on the coons and the sheenie bankers, and I tend to agree with him." Dudley said, "America and Ireland first, Your Eminence. You know where I stand on that." Cantwell said, "Let's get shit-faced drunk and defame that Jew shitheel in the White House. Franklin Double-Cross Rosenfeld, his name is.
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James Ellroy _ This Storm
Matsura dribbled blood on the table. Ace threw a head shot. Matsura screamed. Gold bridgework flew.
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James Ellroy _ This Storm
He kept his extralegal shit there. Throwdown guns, burglars' tools, maryjane to plant on suspects.
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