I'm trying to be less bombastic. I love my books. I think I've done things nobody else has done.

I'm getting a wider circle of fans now. More women, more middle class people.

I don't think I will write anything that could be even remotely considered a genre novel from this point on. I think I've graduated.

I think I'm out of crime fiction now, and I think the dividing line is American Tabloid.

I learn things late-and only the hard way.

Anything less than total candor was bullshit. I owed that to my readers, I owed that to myself, and I owed that most specifically to my mother. I've had some thrilling moments in my 18-year literary career to this point, and nothing comes close to giving Geneva Hilliker Ellroy, the farm girl from Tunnel City, Wisconsin, to the world.

I have insane curiosity as to what happened in all these events. I will never know. I'm not a researcher. I don't possess that kind of mind. I have a researcher who compiles the fact sheets and chronologies that allow me to write these big books of mine.