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" 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. "

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" 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

Good

Teacher

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I've always liked police-blotter kind of writing, or the writing of a policeman, right to the point and hardboiled. That's how I see at least the prose elements of scriptwriting. "

" I am part of a vast generation of people who perpetually live as if they just graduated from college. "

" I might have some sort of personality disorder. I might not have proper filters; it might be some kind of version of Asperger's meets Tourettes meets prose. "

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

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

Jonathan Ames

Anything

Hard

" There's no shortage of material in life. "

" I didn't play or like a lot of board games as a child. I liked playing with my G.I. Joes and making up adventures for them. "

Jonathan Ames

Play

Games

" I don't like rides. I take everything in life quite literally, and so I genuinely feel terrified on rides and liable to vomit at any moment, and I hate to vomit even more than I fear rides. "

" 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

Think

Matter

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

" A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape. "

" 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. "

" 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

Alone

Always

" Twitter is so severe, you know? And it's completely for free, it's scattershot, and it's very easy to feel embarrassed. It's hard to be artful with it. It's like a ticker tape. It's not a forum that's worth mastering, you know? "

" 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. "

" I have very few hobbies. In fact, I have no hobbies. "

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

Jonathan Ames

You

America

" I don't like to publicly acknowledge being a Jew. "

Jonathan Ames

Acknowledge

Jew

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I don't know that I've gotten much feedback directly from the literary world; sometimes I doubt even the notion that there is a literary world, though I guess there is or was. "

" To write about a place, you have to live there. "

" I promote my own self-hatred. "

" I'm actually much more shy and self-conscious than people's perception of me. "

Jonathan Ames

Perception

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