James Ellroy Quotes

The thing about Hitchcock which is quite extraordinary for a director of that time, he had a very strong sense of his own image and publicizing himself. Just a very strong sense of himself as the character of Hitchcock.

An enormous amount of a writer's life is performance. I find myself wondering, at the moment, whether I do too much of it.

I feel like I've been way overexposed in the press. I'd rather play shows and represent myself in person.

I think anyone doing an interview is to some extent on show. And therefore, we always want to put on our best face.

Successful candidates follow a simple fundamental rule: Define yourself before your opponent can define you.

As an actor, we always want people to write about us and talk about us. And when they are actually writing, then we say, 'Don't write about this.' I am an actor; I am a public property. I don't own myself; public owns me.

I've never tried to manipulate my image.

I'm quite subdued, believe it or not. I switch it on for the camera.

Our priests and presidents, our surgeons and lawyers, our educators and newscasters need worry less about satisfying the demands of their discipline than the demands of good showmanship.

Some people are really good at maneuvering their careers and images and I'm not one of those people.

I keep the bad-boy image just to make my fans happy.

You have to be savvy to be a celebrity. You have to create a personality and shove that out. It just seems fatuous to me. Professionally, it's a good idea. But I can't do it.

I'm tired of the industry, tired of playing the whole game - the dressing up, the red carpet. I hate talking about myself.

I think the more you expose yourself as a celebrity, the less interesting you are to watch in your work, because if you're putting yourself out there all the time, you're not holding anything back.

Doing the press has become as much of a job as getting in front of the camera. You have to avoid burnout, avoid saying anything stupid, but still come across as yourself.

My public image is none of my business.

I'm not trying to make a brand out of myself.

For me, there's no dichotomy between being shy or a performer, because I think it's more a way of slightly presenting a version of things to the world.

People say that I do things for publicity. But I will do the things I do as long as I have media support.

Your goal as a candidate - define others before they can define you.

I don't like to filter myself, but I do it for PR's sake.

What audiences see is a curated version of myself.

You have to make a character of yourself if you're going to be known to strangers.

I'm a New York person. I've never gone out of the way to speak to the press to change my persona - I probably should have. It's too late now. But when I first started I was like, "I'm gonna stay this way. I'm gonna be this way," and I continued to. I probably should have sugarcoated it like, "This is not really the way I am - I'm an actor."

Instead of exhibiting talent in the hope that the world would forgive their eccentricities, they have exhibited only their eccentricities, in the hope that the world would give them credit for talent.