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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.

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
Like
Whether
Debate
Give
Fail
Giving
Busy
Ephemeral
Writing
Succeed
Identical
Trying
Failing
Confusing
Make
Stay
Prose
Things
Pleasure
Mostly
Life
Goal
Scripts

More quotes by Jonathan Ames

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I hid my underwear beneath a parked Peugeot.
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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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A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.
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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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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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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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I've really never written about my relationships, or things like that. I wouldn't want to divulge things that were too private.
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I don't like to publicly acknowledge being a Jew.
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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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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'm on the verge of a total breakdown. Sciatica. Taxes. Cars. Fleas, possibly. It's an absurd existence.
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There's no shortage of material in life.
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I am part of a vast generation of people who perpetually live as if they just graduated from college.
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It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long.
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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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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.
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It seems like the original 'Star Trek' could have gone on longer.
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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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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.
Jonathan Ames