A Quote by James Ellroy

L.A. ispolluted. It's overpopulated. But it is very much home. It was inevitable for me, the moving back. I was living in San Francisco, and Joan broke it off with me, and I needed a place to live. I'd been divorced. And I needed to write movies and TV shows to earn a living. Alimony. All that. So I figured what the hell, I'll go back to L.A.
It's weird, when I go back to San Francisco, the few times that I've done shows there since leaving, it still feels like I live there. It's very, very strange for me. That's where my daughter was born, at UCSF. I have this huge attachment to San Francisco. It's like a love affair.
I go up to San Francisco on holidays and spend time with my family there, but whenever I go to Japan, I enjoy every moment. I try to go back there every year or so. It's a phenomenal place, and I absolutely love it. It's not my second home; it is my home. Whenever I go back, I feel very connected with Japan.
I was very involved in back of the house, and finding good people is by far the hardest thing. So, when you're living in a place like New York or San Francisco, where the cost of living is so high, finding great people is very hard. Even finding remotely reliable people.
When I made the UFC, everyone said, 'You need to go overseas.' I thought I had to go as well, and I went to Tristar Gym, and I was there for one or two years. But changes were needed. I'd come off back-to-back losses - Court McGee and Stephen Thompson - and I needed to look at my roots and go back to the drawing board.
I left my heart in San Francisco, high on a hill, it calls to me. To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars, the morning fog may chill the air, I don't care. My love waits there in San Francisco, above the blue and windy sea, when I come home to you, San Francisco , your golden sun will shine for me.
For me, the experience of not living in America was recognizing that I was American. You don't think about yourself being so culturally encoded, so nationally stamped; you don't discover that when you're a tourist for a month. You see how you reflect the place you're from. When I came back from living in Europe, I was very struck by how I didn't see America as the center of the world in the same way. It's very easy to slip back because America is so powerful. But any place you live is the center of the world.
I have made mistakes in the past and been in movies that really weren't good, and that I needed the money at the time, or something -- and the money wasn't even that great. But I needed it, and... they come back on television, those movies... to haunt you. And it's a nightmare!
I brag like hell when I'm confident of what I'm doing. Back when I was sailing ships for a living, I would take a schooner up to San Francisco - I had my master's certificate at 22 - and I would tell myself, 'There isn't a man in the world can do this better 'n I can.' And I meant it.
If you're alive, you can't be bored in San Francisco. If you're not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life......San Francisco is a world to explore. It is a place where the heart can go on a delightful adventure. It is a city in which the spirit can know refreshment every day.
I signed schoolboy forms for Watford when I was 12, but then my parents got divorced, and I never kicked a ball for three years. I rebelled, I left home, but getting back into football sorted me out. It was the second chance I needed.
I arrived in San Francisco in January 1951. After the Second World War, the population was so uprooted. Soldiers came back home for brief periods and took off again. So the population was very fluid, and suddenly it was as if the continent tilted west. The whole population slid west. It took 10 years for America to coalesce into a new culture. And the new culture happened in San Francisco, not New York.
No city invites the heart to come to life as San Francisco does. Arrival in San Francisco is an experience in living.
I got involved in cocaine because I needed to lose weight. I felt the pressure living here. I took it to wake me up and keep me moving.
I would never allow anyone to give me money, no difference how badly I needed it. I wanted literally to earn my living.
I never learned music. I'm quite uneducated, and usually I sat in front of the TV, with soap operas on, in England. It was very inspiring for me, I'd done all this traveling around, I came back living with my parents, everyone around me was like they're living in a soap opera.
Jazz has always been my first love. It has this timeless effect on me. It's pretty odd that I didn't become a jazz musician. I went another way because I needed to earn a good living to support my large family.
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