James Ellroy Quotes

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

I think I'm too lazy a writer to do something like historical fiction. You have to do so much research. I just write what I know.

I'm a novelist first, and I wrote a bunch of books, and everything I write, I just find people are more interesting when there's an element of humor to it.

I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

My first seven novels were contemporary spiritual novels, my next nine had strong elements of fantasy, and now I'm writing thrillers, more as a choice to spread my wings than anything. Writers, like good wine, should mature with age.

Many novice writers, students in particular, think that writing is little more than copying down their self-talk, the palaver of the voices they hear in their heads. Of course, self-talk is thinking, and writing begins with thinking.

I don't write as much erotic romance as I used to, but I think that's just because my writing style has changed.

Most books aren't pure nonfiction or fiction.

I could come up with 50 stories that I am thinking about.

I love the essay. It's my favorite genre to work in.

I love to read. And right now I'm on my last hundred pages of 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen, and I really enjoyed it. His writing is just - he's one of those writers where you just go, 'There are people just meant to be novel writers.'

I'm not really a mass market writer.

I'm a novelist, that's how I make my livelihood, and I concentrate on the novels.

It's never really easy to be successful as a writer when you're trying to write literary fiction. You've already limited your readership limited by that choice.

'Sag Harbor' was a very different book for me. It changed the way I thought about books that I wanted to do.

My feeling about my own work is, I could be writing 'The Aeneid' and they would still have to call it chick lit or mommy lit or menopausal old hag lit.

Real novelists, those we admire, those we consider timeless in their language and character and scene, those who receive accolades for inventive language and form, have writing lives we imagine in specific ways.

If you have some natural talent and really want to write, you should read the books of someone who's very successful in your genre. You don't want to plagiarize, but you want to learn from that author.

A lot of people think the best work I've done was nonfiction - the 'Brothers and Keepers' book. But I think of myself as a fiction writer. And I think, if my work is put in perspective, all the books would be a continual questioning of what's true and what's not true, what's documented and what's not documented.

I can't stand the short story form, which, after all, is a magazine form.

I want to write books.

I've been writing since 1973. I've written nonfiction things of that nature, but I'm probably best known for crime fiction and, to some extent, horror fiction.

When you compose, it's like writing. You're like a writer. You just think all the time.

The novels I planned to write were never going to be funny books about Jews. They were going to be country house books. Only later on could I write what I knew I was best at writing about.

I think most short story writers, at one time or another, over the course of several books, naturally skirt near the edge of one genre or another.