Jonathan Ames > Quotes

“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, My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays

“People don't expect too much from literature. They just want to know they're not alone with being confused.”
― Jonathan Ames

“I didn't think I was in a morbid mood, but it appears I am. My mind goes round and round trying to figure things out, but I always come back to the same two things: Loneliness and Death. Life ends before we figure anything out, most importantly how not to be lonely. Solitude is fine. But feeling like you have no one to love - abject lonliness - is not alright.”
― Jonathan Ames, My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays

“For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone.”
― Jonathan Ames, interview on AV Club.com

“Oh, God, I don't know what's more difficult, life or the English language.”
― Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!

“I was aware that I was acting atrociously but I couldn't stop myself. Rarely had I behaved in such a manner. But I guess when we're feeling lonely in life, we attack those who actually do love us. It's one of the things that characterizes human nature and can be summed up in one word: FLAWED.”
― Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!

“It was one of those days when every time I went to go out the door, something grabbed me in the back of the brain and said, lie down and masturbate one more time.”
― Jonathan Ames, I Pass Like Night

“Unfortunately, I'm one of those idiots who knows everything about health and is in a constant state of alarm, and yet I continue to do everything I shouldn't do.”
― Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!

“I know I experience great consolation when my mouth is between a woman’s legs. I think it must be because I’m drinking in her happiness.”
― Jonathan Ames, My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays

“I've always been intrigued by Stockholm Syndrome. Reminds me of my childhood.”
― Jonathan Ames, Bored to Death: A Noir-otic Story

“It was another sunny day, good for skin cancer and playing tennis.”
― Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!

“I wondered where the person was who had taken my place, who wanted to know what news people had been told. I'm always looking for the person who replaces me, who thinks the things I do, who fills in for me when I'm not there. I know there is someone younger than me doing what I did and someone older doing what I will do, and someone my age being just like me.”
― Jonathan Ames, I Pass Like Night

“He was aware that he was not completely sane, so he kept himself in rigid check, playing both jailer and prisoner.”
― Jonathan Ames, You Were Never Really Here

“I'm on the verge of a total breakdown. Sciatica. Taxes. Cars. Fleas, possibly. It's an absurd existence.”
― Jonathan Ames, The Extra Man

“Anyway, what do women grab when they’re nervous and sitting at their desks? Do they slip their hands inside their panties? What a distracting thought. Just the word panty is distracting. I love that word; it implies so much. I love how women look in panties, how they’re flat in the front. I’m thirty-five, but sometimes it’s still this beautiful amazing shock to me that women don’t have penises. They just have this lovely little mound of hair and then this tucked away glorious hole. Hole. Wait. Hole sounds vulgar. Is passageway better? Pretty envelope? Georgia O’Keeffe flower? Pussy? Pussy is good. I like the word pussy. Tucked away beautiful pussy. I wish I could put my face in one right now and sing out, “I love you!”
― Jonathan Ames, My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays

“Try to think about more important things,' he said. 'Think about your soul, your character. Think about the freezer. It's a solid block of ice. It needs defrosting. There might a steak in there. Concentrate on things like that. There could be a meal in it.”
― Jonathan Ames, The Extra Man

“Insightful and heartbreaking, but also wonderfully comedic in its gutsy honesty. A beautiful and powerful memoir.”
― Jonathan Ames, What's Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer

“Joe knew that all human beings are the star of their own very important film, a film in which they are both camera and actor; a film in which they are always playing the fearful and lonely hero who gets up each day hoping to finally strike upon the life they are meant to lead, though they never do.”
― Jonathan Ames, You Were Never Really Here

“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 do think everyone would be a lot happier if we laid eggs on our own and could just have friendship and didn't need to mount and penetrate one another.”
― Jonathan Ames , Wake Up, Sir!

“Essentially I'm a pantheist-agnostic. I worship many deities with equal amounts of confusion.”
― Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!

“I hid my underwear beneath a parked Peugeot.”
― Jonathan Ames, The Alcoholic

“I felt myself falling asleep; my eyes were closing, and then I thought, Maybe I should just kill myself. Suicidal thoughts always sneak up on me like that. But I don’t mind them. They’re like aspirin. They calm me down.”
― Jonathan Ames, What's Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer

“Aside from the possible scientific explanations for the death of ballsiness, there is an economic one, which I think may be the real cause: high rents. It's very hard to be a ballsy writer when you can't afford to live anywhere. It makes you absolutely nervous and insane and takes all yours guts away. I have to say this is the case for yours truly. If I could pay a 1954 rent of fifty-eight dollars a month, I might actually be a ballsy writer. But I'm so crippled by my enormous twenty-first century rent that I can barely get out of bed, let alone raise hell, which is what you need to do to qualify as a ballsy writer. You have to be a hell-raiser. You have to care about political things and you have to be able to afford booze, not to mention days lost to hangovers. But if you're worried all the time about having to go live with your parents as a thirty-seven-year-old, then to hell with hell. You only have one goal: to come up with the rent. You don't have time for political causes or all-night orgies.”
― Jonathan Ames, My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays

“It's not easy taking care of one's self, determining nap lengths and all that, but with two people it's a manageable job.”
― Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!

“It's very hard not to commit cancer suicide in America.”
― Jonathan Ames, Wake Up, Sir!

“I was deeply depressed. I felt my brain slipping out of its casing and down my neck, like an egg sliding on a frying pan. So”
― Jonathan Ames, What's Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer

“I’m kind of an upbeat Hamlet.”
― Jonathan Ames, Bored to Death: A Noir-otic Story

“There was a naughty grin on her face and she said, “Wait. You’ll get an erection and then what will I do?”
― Jonathan Ames, The Extra Man

“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.”
― Jonathan Ames, The Extra Man