Jonathan Ames Quotes

It was one of those days when every time I went to go out the door, something grabbed me in the back of the brain and said, lie down and masturbate one more time.

I enjoy both TV writing and novel writing, and they are very similar. The goal is to entertain and amuse the audience, and I subscribe to this P.G. Wodehouse piece of advice: "Try to give pleasure with every sentence."

I always liked those characters in 'True Blood' who could turn into animals. I'd love to be an animal of some kind and run quickly through a forest.

Then again, the name, the associations with a writer's name, can add to the reader's entertainment and pleasure.

The work changes the way your face changes and ages - it just does. Also, I have very little connection to anything I've written. I move on. We all move on

The real self and the public self are intertwined, like a tumor around an organ, and you can't cut the tumor or you'll kill the organ, so they live together, until the tumor chokes the organ off - but which self is the tumor?. Or it's like something out of Star Trek. The Borg.

People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused.

I'm also not sure that I look up to others as knowing what the hell is going on, except maybe Andre Agassi, who, when I interviewed him, while covering the U.S. Open, seemed to know what was going on. My basic assumption is that we're all confused all the time. Some people do act more confident, though. Maybe they aren't confused. I am. I'm confused.

I am part of a vast generation of people who perpetually live as if they just graduated from college.

As a child, I wanted to be an athlete, a professional tennis player or something like that.

I didn't think I was in a morbid mood, but it appears I am. My mind goes round and round trying to figure things out, but I always come back to the same two things: Loneliness and Death. Life ends before we figure anything out, most importantly how not to be lonely. Solitude is fine. But feeling like you have no one to love - abject lonliness - is not alright.

For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone.

I need to stay in the present and use that new-age mantra: 'I'm okay right now.' But I worry about all the things I'm failing at every moment.

I am always the source of the worst rumors about myself.

One last thing on objectives - I like to make things, create things, so that's probably been the primary objective all along, even before the ego objective - to make. To record. But why record... that gets back to the ego, a little. Oh, well. Making is good. I like to make things.

Maybe my work isn't a cry for help. It may just be a baby's need to cry or a dog's need to bark. You know, barks that seem connected to phantom noises and cries that just come; though a baby's cries are usually efficient - something is bothering them. Anyway, I think giving money is a sign of love. If you truly want to help someone, a lot of times giving them money is the best thing you can do.

Don't hold me to anything in the book. I'm a waffler. I like wafflers. They said John Kerry was a waffler, but I admired him for that - showed he could change his mind.

I don't really recognise success. I don't see myself as on an upwardly mobile trajectory. I see myself as on the edge of a cliff about to fall off.

Some ego is involved because I guess one wants to be perceived as a good clown and one puts one's name on the art; but it's so hard to do anything in life, trapped as we are in our bodies, that is purely selfless for others... somehow the self is always involved.

I don't really know the person who wrote the things I wrote. I kind of know him, but I change so much all the time that it's like I start fresh over and over and over and over. Writing-wise and life-wise.

Something has happened where you almost never grow up in America. Maybe it's the greater wealth.

I drink coffee. Without coffee, I probably couldnt write.

I don't like to publicly acknowledge being a Jew.

I hid my underwear beneath a parked Peugeot.

There's no shortage of material in life.

It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long.

I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way.

It's hard to leave New York: this is where my friends are, my parents are. It is so vital. The whole world seems to look to New York.

In fact, I have no hobbies. The only thing I like to do in life is to go to the Russian Baths in Manhattan. I also like to watch sports on TV, and I like to read books. So that's it - Russian Baths, sports, and books.

For me, the past is dead. Can't go back.

I have very few hobbies. In fact, I have no hobbies.

Mostly I have to try to censor myself so as not to write things that will hurt other people, or that will go too far.

Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human population of the world. But in my little, soft realm of trying to amuse a few dozen middle-class people with my books and articles, I did struggle to survive in my own way.

From age 23 to 44 - I'm 45 now - I was always in need of money, and I was especially in need of it from 23 to about 34, and my great aunt would always give me money, a hundred bucks, every two months or so, and a lot of times that hundred bucks made a huge difference - I could eat or pay a small bill. It kept me going. She gave me money. It was very loving.

I certainly want to portray the importance of friendship. I had noticed in movies and TV shows that friends often treated one another terribly, and my friends, the few I have, are never cruel to me or unkind, so I wanted to convey that.

I grew up in northern New Jersey - the banlieue of New York - and I now live in Brooklyn. I am separated from my parents by about 50 miles, but really there is almost no distance between us. I speak to them nearly every day.

Having a show get canceled is like, 'Oh, you have caviar between your teeth,' you know what I mean? Because you had a show in the first place.

I've really never written about my relationships, or things like that. I wouldn't want to divulge things that were too private.

Whether I'm writing scripts or prose, the goal is identical. To give pleasure. Now whether I succeed or not is up for debate, and, mostly, I fail. But I try. I like to make things. It's a way to stay busy during one's ephemeral and confusing life.

I live for coincidences. They briefly give to me the illusion or the hope that there's a pattern to my life, and if there's a pattern, then maybe I'm moving toward some kind of destiny where it's all explained.

I promote my own self-hatred.

The reason it's hard for me to tweet is I don't want to pronounce anything, and Twitter is for pronouncing.

There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.

Personally, I've never had it as a goal in life to be happy. Seems impossible to achieve. Even the Declaration of Independence seems to acknowledge this. They talk about the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

I wish we had a dog in the show so that I could get to be a dog for a day.

After my first novel, my mother said to me, 'Why don't you make your writing more funny? You're so funny in person.' Because my first novel was rather dark. And I don't know, but something about what she said was true. 'Yes, why don't I?' Maybe I was afraid to be funny in the writing. But since then, seven books later, almost everything I've done has a comedic edge to it.

It seems like the original 'Star Trek' could have gone on longer.