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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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Jonathan Ames
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 23
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Really
Wise
Things
Start
Time
Change
Life
Persons
Like
Person
Writing
Much
Fresh
Kind
Wrote

More quotes by 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.
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To write about a place, you have to live there.
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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
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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.
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As a child, I wanted to be an athlete, a professional tennis player or something like that.
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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.
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The reason it's hard for me to tweet is I don't want to pronounce anything, and Twitter is for pronouncing.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long.
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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.
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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.
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I've always been intrigued by Stockholm Syndrome. Reminds me of my childhood.
Jonathan Ames
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I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way.
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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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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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
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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.
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I'm actually much more shy and self-conscious than people's perception of me.
Jonathan Ames