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"I am conservative by temperament. I disapprove of criminal activity. I am very solidly and markedly on the side of authority. The truth is I would rather err on the side of too much authority than too little."
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"Macy: "In Truth, I said, "there are no rules other than you have to tell the truth.Wes: "How do you win? he askedMacy: "That, I said, "is such a boy question."

"Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it."

"A false potential can dress itself up as attractive ideas."

"Truth does not sit in a cave and hide like a lie. It wanders around proudly and roars loudly like a lion."

"The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true."

"Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are."

"When I was a child, I thought grown-ups and teachers knew the truth, because they told me they did. It took years for me to discover that the first step in finding out the truth is to begin unlearning almost everything adults had taught me, and to start doing all the things they'd told me NOT to do. Their main pitch was that achievement equaled happiness, when all you had to do was study rock stars, or movie stars, or them, to see that they were mostly miserable. They were all running around in mazes like everyone else."

"The only sentence that begins with 'I' that's true of me is I'm full of shit."
Explore more quotes by James Ellroy

"Noir is dead for me because historically, I think it's a simple view. I've taken it as far as it can go. I think I've expanded on it a great deal, taken it further than any other American novelist."

"When I was a kid, Eisenhower had been President forever, and all of a sudden, everything in the world was all about Jack Kennedy. I was 12, interested in politics; my father was from Massachusetts, had an accent like Kennedy."

"My mother and I will continue on some level that I haven't determined yet. I think my mother's a great character, and I have to say that giving my mother to the world has to be the biggest thrill of my writing career."

"I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age."

"Raymond Chandler once wrote that Dashiell Hammett gave murder back to the people who really committed it."

"I've been tremendously moved by a bunch of odd books. Ross McDonald is very important to me. I love the Lew Archer books."
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