Jonathan Ames

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

“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.”

“For me, the past is dead. Can't go back.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“I have very few hobbies. In fact, I have no hobbies.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There's no shortage of material in life.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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?”