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To write about a place, you have to live there.

Jonathan Ames

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Jonathan Ames
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 23
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Live
Writing
Write
Place

More quotes by Jonathan Ames

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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.
Jonathan Ames
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A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.
Jonathan Ames
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It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long.
Jonathan Ames
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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.
Jonathan Ames
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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
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Oh, God, I don't know what's more difficult, life or the English language.
Jonathan Ames
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How terrible to be alcoholic. You just want to quietly soothe and maybe poison yourself, but you end up poisoning those around you as well, like trying to commit suicide with a gas oven and unwittingly murdering your neighbors.
Jonathan Ames
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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.
Jonathan Ames
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My sophomore English teacher encouraged me to write for the school paper, and that's what got me started. Suddenly it struck me that being a writer could be a romantic and adventurous position. Previously, I had thought I would be a tennis pro, giving lessons at a local club. I thought that would be a good life, and it might have been.
Jonathan Ames
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I wish we had a dog in the show so that I could get to be a dog for a day.
Jonathan Ames
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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.
Jonathan Ames
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There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.
Jonathan Ames
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I'm actually much more shy and self-conscious than people's perception of me.
Jonathan Ames
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I don't like to publicly acknowledge being a Jew.
Jonathan Ames
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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.
Jonathan Ames
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Whenever I wrote fiction, people always seemed to think that what I wrote was true, that it was entirely autobiographical. And when I would write non-fiction, they often accused me of exaggeration and fictionalization.
Jonathan Ames
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I hid my underwear beneath a parked Peugeot.
Jonathan Ames
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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.
Jonathan Ames
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Nothing wrong with changing your mind. That's a very unwaffling thing to say: Nothing wrong... Who am I to say that there's nothing wrong with it? Maybe something is wrong with changing your mind. Anyway, love is very, very difficult. I love. But probably because I hate myself on some deep, sick level, it makes loving difficult. But I do try.
Jonathan Ames
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I've always been inspired by Don Quixote as a role model of sorts, of the power of books to sort of make you insane in maybe a beautiful way.
Jonathan Ames