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 l….

There are a lot of Ellroy lifts, man. This guy went to school. But then there's a willful thing that comes over me - God gives it to me - where I go,….

My father actually went to college, and my mother went to nursing school, so, you know. I wouldn't... They were actually too square and right-wing to….

Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscienc….

[Raymond] Chandler, I reread him, and there's a lot of bad writing there. I don't think he knew much about people..

Anything less than total candor was bullshit. I owed that to my readers, I owed that to myself, and I owed that most specifically to my mother. I've ….

You get up in the morning because you might meet a woman. And if you stay at home by yourself, alone, you will not meet a woman..

Classical music fulfills for me the function of narrative. I spend 90 minutes a day listening to symphonic music - Beethoven to Bartók - some chamber….

In the time just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Perfidia opens, we were pre-psychologized. There were no concepts of identity, no politics ….

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 i….

L.A.: Come on vacation, go home on probation..

I think I'm out of crime fiction now, and I think the dividing line is American Tabloid..

I don't think I came out of anybody. I think I developed out of the influences I described in My Dark Places. American history, L.A. of the 1950s. I'….

Rock and rollers can get you the youth buzz, and younger people are fanatical readers..

Some people don’t respond to civility..

I learn things late-and only the hard way..

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 dr….

How did I change my life? I wanted things. I wanted women and I wanted to write books..

The 1950s to me is darkness, hidden history, perversion behind most doors waiting to creep out. The 1950s to most people is kitsch and Mickey Mouse w….

It's all sex for me. Politics is sex. Race is sex. It's the novel. It's the novel!.

We do. Or re-create the ones we have, and project. My whole life is projection..