Jonathan Ames
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
Jonathan Ames

A lot of writers, probably because they're sensitive, which makes them want to be writers, have fears about their masculinity, so they overcompensate by having an interest in boxing and tough-guy things.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

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
Jonathan Ames

Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human population of the world. But in my little, soft realm of trying to amuse a few dozen middle-class people with my books and articles, I did struggle to survive in my own way.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

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
Jonathan Ames

I don't laugh that much, but I do like humorous books, and I like to entertain readers that way.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

I drink coffee. Without coffee, I probably couldn't write.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

As a child, I wanted to be an athlete, a professional tennis player or something like that.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

When I was in college, I had the good fortune to have Joyce Carol Oates as my writing teacher. She told me that I could take an aspect of myself, and from that one bit of personality, I can create a character. This is what I have done, particularly in my novels.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

I wish I was the kind of writer who would go to a war zone and write about something that's meaningful and important to people, but that's not my area of coverage.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

Now, all writing - all the arts - are a form of 'Pay attention to me,' but there's also the flip side. Like, I want to give something. Let me entertain you, let me amuse you, let me try to please you with this thing I've made. And then pay attention to me.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

I don't have ADD, but I only like to pay attention to the things I like to pay attention to, and things like getting a TV and getting the cable working are beyond me, and so I let such things lapse, sometimes for years. This applies to keeping my apartment clean.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

I need to stay in the present and use that new-age mantra: 'I'm okay right now.' But I worry about all the things I'm failing at every moment.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

The reason it's hard for me to tweet is I don't want to pronounce anything, and Twitter is for pronouncing.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

It's hard for me to think of writing a novel, because it takes so long.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

Something has happened where you almost never grow up in America. Maybe it's the greater wealth.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

I don't mind being ridiculed - well, I guess I would mind a little, but it would only last a few minutes - it's all very ephemeral; it doesn't really matter what people think of me.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

I promote my own self-hatred.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

There are so many talented young writers named Jonathan, with whom by comparison I suffer terribly.

Jonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames

I grew up in northern New Jersey - the banlieue of New York - and I now live in Brooklyn. I am separated from my parents by about 50 miles, but really there is almost no distance between us. I speak to them nearly every day.