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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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Jonathan Ames
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 23
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Happy
Acknowledge
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Independence
Even
Pursuit
Never
Achieve
Life
Impossible
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Goal
Declaration
Happiness
Personally
More quotes by Jonathan Ames
I'm on the verge of a total breakdown. Sciatica. Taxes. Cars. Fleas, possibly. It's an absurd existence.
Jonathan Ames
A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.
Jonathan Ames
I'm actually much more shy and self-conscious than people's perception of me.
Jonathan Ames
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
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
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
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
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.
Jonathan Ames
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
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
I don't like to publicly acknowledge being a Jew.
Jonathan Ames
To write about a place, you have to live there.
Jonathan Ames
I am part of a vast generation of people who perpetually live as if they just graduated from college.
Jonathan Ames
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
As a child, I wanted to be an athlete, a professional tennis player or something like that.
Jonathan Ames
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
I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way.
Jonathan Ames
I've always been intrigued by Stockholm Syndrome. Reminds me of my childhood.
Jonathan Ames
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
I wish we had a dog in the show so that I could get to be a dog for a day.
Jonathan Ames
