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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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Jonathan Ames
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 23
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Every
Pleasure
Subscribe
Audience
Amuse
Goal
Entertain
Enjoy
Sentence
Give
Similar
Giving
Piece
Writing
Advice
Trying
Novel
Wodehouse

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I'm on the verge of a total breakdown. Sciatica. Taxes. Cars. Fleas, possibly. It's an absurd existence.
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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.
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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 wish we had a dog in the show so that I could get to be a dog for a day.
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I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way.
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It seems like the original 'Star Trek' could have gone on longer.
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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.
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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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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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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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I've always been intrigued by Stockholm Syndrome. Reminds me of my childhood.
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A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.
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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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There's no shortage of material in life.
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There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.
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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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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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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
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To write about a place, you have to live there.
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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.
Jonathan Ames