Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jonathan Ames
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 23
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Feels
Sentences
Way
Communicate
Always
Perhaps
Alone
Communicating
Books
Depressed
Less
Authors
Book
Isolated
Feel
Helped

More quotes by Jonathan Ames

Image
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
Image
It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long.
Jonathan Ames
Image
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
Jonathan Ames
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.
Jonathan Ames
Image
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
Image
Oh, God, I don't know what's more difficult, life or the English language.
Jonathan Ames
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm actually much more shy and self-conscious than people's perception of me.
Jonathan Ames
Image
There's no shortage of material in life.
Jonathan Ames
Image
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
Image
To write about a place, you have to live there.
Jonathan Ames
Image
The reason it's hard for me to tweet is I don't want to pronounce anything, and Twitter is for pronouncing.
Jonathan Ames
Image
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
Image
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.
Jonathan Ames