Quotes from Jonathan Ames

It's hard to leave New York: this is where my friends are, my parents are. It is so vital. The whole world seems to look to New York.

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.

My Caprice was a spacious cruiser, well insulated from the world—one motored along the highways as if sitting in a middle-class living room equipped with an engine and tires.

As I followed Mr. Harrison, I picked up his salty, sweet odor—it pervaded the whole apartment actually—and I liked it. It smelled alive.

Then between Sixth Street and Seventh Street, my mood was vastly improved when I passed a good-looking dog, a dark brown Lab. We locked eyes for a moment—two lovers from a former life reunited—and I felt quite happy.

There was a picture of Votto standing by his pool, smiling, the sun in his eyes—Life is beautiful. Joe looked at the picture. Then he went out to a hardware store and picked up a new hammer.

Handicapped with my own melancholy

im sorry I sniffed, but I have to go to an orgy.

Because I live for coincidences. They briefly give to me the illusion or hope that there's a pattern to my life, and if there's a pattern, then maybe im moving toward some kind of destiny where it's all explained.

Okay, enough of that. If I keep writing in this emotional vein, Oprah might take notice of me

I happily played the clown, Because I am a clown.

But there's another story, A real short one, probably written on my grave: couldn't stay sober. Never liked himself.

Unlike most dog owners, I don't project onto him that he's my child, my son. Rather, it's a more disturbed relationship than that. I think of him as my dear friend whom I happen to live with. In that way, we're like two old-fashioned closeted bachelors who cohabitate and don't think the rest of the world knows we're lovers.

It's kind of like wearing a baseball cup. I want to call it the Mangina." "That's a good name for it. . . . Where are the other vaginas you made?" Chandler brought over to me a plastic bag and dumped out all the failed vaginas on to his drafting table.

Rather than say anything, I stood up and put my foot in the water, testing it. Testing the water, that is, not my foot. Though maybe it was my foot I was testing - whether it could tolerate the water's temperature. Oh, God, I don't know what's more difficult, life or the English language.

Yes. We have rooms. But closed one more week. Come back one week.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.