Jonathan Ames Quotes

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Jonathan Ames

Profession : Author

Birth : March 23, 1964

When I was in college, I had the good fortune to have Joyce Carol Oates as my writing teacher. She told me that I could take an aspect of myself, and from that one bit of personality, I can create a character. This is what I have done, particularly in my novels.

Jonathan Ames

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

Jonathan Ames

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

Jonathan Ames

I'm actually much more shy and self-conscious than people's perception of me.

Jonathan Ames

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.

Jonathan Ames

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

Jonathan Ames

I didn't play or like a lot of board games as a child. I liked playing with my G.I. Joes and making up adventures for them.

Jonathan Ames

I don't like rides. I take everything in life quite literally, and so I genuinely feel terrified on rides and liable to vomit at any moment, and I hate to vomit even more than I fear rides.

Jonathan Ames

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

Jonathan Ames

There's no shortage of material in life.

Jonathan Ames

No, I'm not very productive at all. I'm probably like an animal. I mean, great animals in the ocean feed all the time. I'm someone who procrastinates, worries, for most of a month, and then I'll have a flurry of manic productivity with a sense of great urgency and fear for, like, two days.

Jonathan Ames

I've always liked police-blotter kind of writing, or the writing of a policeman, right to the point and hardboiled. That's how I see at least the prose elements of scriptwriting.

Jonathan Ames

For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone. Perhaps if I was depressed and isolated, just communicating with these authors through their sentences helped me.

Jonathan Ames

A lot of writers, probably because they're sensitive, which makes them want to be writers, have fears about their masculinity, so they overcompensate by having an interest in boxing and tough-guy things.

Jonathan Ames

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.

Jonathan Ames

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.

Jonathan Ames

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.

Jonathan Ames

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

Jonathan Ames

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

Jonathan Ames

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.

Jonathan Ames