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“Anybody who doesn't know that politics is crime has got a few screws loose.”
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“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.”
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“To me, there's nothing on earth other than women. It's why I get out of bed every morning.”
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“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.”
― American Tabloid
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.”
― American Tabloid
“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.”
― L.A. Confidential
― L.A. Confidential
“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.”
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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.”
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“I am the son of a murdered woman—anybody who'd call my books misogynistic is, frankly, out of their fucking mind.
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“Some people don’t respond to civility.”
― The Black Dahlia
― The Black Dahlia
“It was easy not to think of my future; I didn't have one.”
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“Dead people belong to the live people who claim them most obsessively.”
― My Dark Places
― My Dark Places
“I learn things late–and only the hard way.”
― The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women: A Memoir
― The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women: A Memoir
“It all came down to money - the great equalizer and common denominator.”
― The Big Nowhere
― The Big Nowhere
“Closure is bullshit.”
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“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.”
― My Dark Places
― My Dark Places
“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.”
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“Cherchez la femme, Bucky. Remember that.”
― The Black Dahlia
― The Black Dahlia
“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.”
― The Black Dahlia
… “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.”
― The Black Dahlia
“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.”
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“Good evening peepers, prowlers, pederasts, panty-sniffers, punks and pimps. I'm James Ellroy, the demon dog, the foul owl with the death growl, the white knight of the far right, and the slick trick with the donkey dick. I'm the author of 16 books, masterpieces all; they precede all my future masterpieces. These books will leave you reamed, steamed and drycleaned, tie-dyed, swept to the side, true-blued, tattooed and bah fongooed. These are books for the whole fuckin' family, if the name of your family is Manson.”
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“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.”
― American Tabloid
― American Tabloid
“Downtown, a dress for Meg- I do it every time I kill a man.”
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“Our shared world is humanly unquantifiable and ideologically confused. Which one of them is capable of implementing the most recognizable harm or good? ”
― Blood's a Rover
― Blood's a Rover
“Don’t be so goddamn proper. Don’t be such a fucking saint.”
― The Black Dahlia
― The Black Dahlia
“Don't make a career out of underestimating me." — Claire de Haven”
― The Big Nowhere
― The Big Nowhere
“He used to pimp and pull shakedowns. Now he rode shotgun to History.”
― American Tabloid
― American Tabloid
“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.”
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“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.”
― Destination: Morgue!
They'll shore up my shit. They'll radically revise it. They'll pass it along.”
― Destination: Morgue!
“I never knew her in life. She exists for me through others, in evidence of the ways her death drove them”
― The Black Dahlia
― The Black Dahlia
“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.”
― The Big Nowhere
― The Big Nowhere
