James Ellroy

“Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that.”

“I got an alibi, just in case you think I did it. Tighter than a crab's ass, and that is air tight.”

“Tell me anything. Tell me everything.Revoke our time apart.Love me fierce in danger.”

“He took three shots a night-no more, no less.He switched from whisky to straight gin. The bum compensated for the scant volume.Three shots tweaked his hatreds. Four shots and up cut those hatreds all the way loose.Three shots said, You project danger. Four shots or more said, You're ugly and you limp.”

“Bissell fingered his napkin. "I do, Mr. Boyd. And I know how generous Mr. Hoffa, Mr. Marcello and a few other Italian gentlemen have been to the Cause, and I know that you possess a certain amount of influence in the Kennedy camp. And as the President's chief Cuban-issue liaison, I also know that Fidel Castro and Communism are a good deal worse than the Mafia, although I wouldn't dream of asking you to intercede on our friends' behalf, because it might cost you credibility with your sacred Kennedys."Stanton dropped his soup spoon. Pete let a big breath out eeeasy.Boyd put out a big shit-eating grin. "I'm glad you feel that way, Mr. Bissell. Because if you did ask me, I'd have to tell you to go fuck yourself.”

“Jimmy Hoffa said, “I know how Jesus must have felt. The fucking pharaohs rose to power on his coattails like the fucking Kennedy brothers are rising on mine.”Heshie Ryskind said, “Get your history straight. It was Julius Caesar that did Jesus in.”

“He used to pimp and pull shakedowns. Now he rode shotgun to History.”

“He was about to pocket a list of local sanitariums when he heard "Traitor," and saw Mickey and Herman Gerstein standing a few feet away. Cohen with a clean shot, but a half dozen witnesses spoiling his chance. Buzz said, "I suppose this means my guard gig's kaput. Huh, Mick?" The man looked hurt as much as he looked mad. "Goyishe shitheel traitor. Cocksucker. Communist. How much money did I give you? How much money did I set up for you that you should do me like you did?" Buzz said, "Too much, Mick." "That is no smart answer, you fuck. You should beg. You should beg that I don't do you slow." "Would it help?" "No." "There you go, boss." Mickey said, "Herman, leave this room"; Gerstein exited. The typers kept typing and the clerks kept clerking. Buzz gave the little hump's cage a rattle. "No hard feelin's, huh?" Mickey said, "I will make you a deal, because when I say "deal," it is always to trust. Right?" "Trust" and "deal" were the man's bond-it was why he went with him instead of Siegel or Dragna. "Sure, Mick." "Send Audrey back to me and I will not hurt a hair on her head and I will not do you slow. Do you trust my word?" "Yes." "Do you trust I'll get you?" "You're the oddson favorite, boss." "Then be smart and do it." "No deal. Take care, Jewboy. I'll miss you. I really will.”

“Fear and I played peek-a-boo - it always seemed to grab my balls and twist just when it felt like something inside me could banish all the bullshit forever.”

“It's time to demythologise 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 their time.”

“Some people don’t respond to civility.”

“Where’s your sketch pad?” I asked.… “I gave that up,” Kay said. “I wasn’t very good, so I changed my major.”“To what?”“To pre-med, then psychology, then English lit, then history.”“I like a woman who knows what she wants.”Kay smiled. “So do I, but I don’t know any.”

“Dear FB Friends,Fuck Facebook!!!!! — It has proven to be worthless as a book-selling device, and is nothing but a repository for perverts, reparation-seekers, old buddies looking for handouts, syphillitic ex-girlfriends looking for extra-curricular schlong and hack writers begging for blurbs.”

“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 conscience.”

“Call me Dudley. We're of equal rank. I'm older, but you're far better looking. I can tell we're going to be grand partners.”

“I didn't care who we were. I required no consummation. I knew that whoever we were and whatever we had would never stop.”

“I learn things late–and only the hard way.”

“We burned down rooms. We knew what everything meant. We understood terror and fury as no one else had. It hurt to be together and hurt more to be apart. Our mouths clashed. Our teeth scraped. Our arms ached from the meld. We knew each other's smells and heard each other's voices and told each other things that no one else ever had.”

“Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good? ”

“She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.”

“I am the son of a murdered woman—anybody who'd call my books misogynistic is, frankly, out of their fucking mind.”

“To me, there's nothing on earth other than women. It's why I get out of bed every morning.”

“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.”

“There's a kid or some kids somewhere. I'll never know them. They're particle-puzzle-cubing right now. They might be mini-misanthropes from Moosefart, Montana. They might be demi-dystopians from Dogdick, Delaware. They dig my demonic dramas. The metaphysic maims them. They grasp the gravity. They'll duke it out with their demons. They'll serve a surfeit of survival skills. They won't be chronologically crucified.They'll shore up my shit. They'll radically revise it. They'll pass it along.”

“My dad was always snoozing on the couch, like Dagwood Bumstead. He was a lazy motherfucker. God bless him. He was always working on some kind of get-rich-quick scheme. This is what my dad was like: I'd say, Hey, Dad, we studied penguins today in school. He'd say, Yeah? I'm a penguin fucker from way back. Dad, I saw a giraffe at the zoo today. Yeah? I'm a giraffe fucker from way back. That's my dad. My dad was a giraffe fucker.”

“Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.”

“The left one's the hospital, the right one's death. The right one steals your life while the left steals your breath. These hands are bad juju and the bad boogaloo, they're the teeth of the demon as he slides down the flue.”

“It was easy not to think of my future; I didn't have one.”

“Downtown, a dress for Meg- I do it every time I kill a man.”

“Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.”