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.

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

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.

For me, books have always been a way to feel less alone while being alone.

Recently, I've discovered Radiohead and find them to be quite good. So clearly, I'm some kind of musical retard. (Jonathan Ames, Middle-American Gothic)

Oh, God, I don't know what's more difficult, life or the English language.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've always been intrigued by Stockholm Syndrome. Reminds me of my childhood.

It was another sunny day, good for skin cancer and playing tennis.

Insightful and heartbreaking, but also wonderfully comedic in its gutsy honesty. A beautiful and powerful memoir.

He was aware that he was not completely sane, so he kept himself in rigid check, playing both jailer and prisoner.

I'm on the verge of a total breakdown. Sciatica. Taxes. Cars. Fleas, possibly. It's an absurd existence.

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.

Essentially I'm a pantheist-agnostic. I worship many deities with equal amounts of confusion.

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.

I feel like a parent whose children prefer to stay inside and watch TV. The father pleads, "It's a beautiful day. Why don't you go play outside?" In this case, I feel like pleading, "It's a completely spooky night. Forget the loud music--come outside and have a blood sacrifice or something! There's a full moon!" (Jonathan Ames, Middle-American Gothic)

I hid my underwear beneath a parked Peugeot.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

It's very hard not to commit cancer suicide in America.

Two chubby, expressionless boys stand to my right. They were once cute children, but now I imagine that they spend hours in dark rooms looking at violent porn. Or perhaps they have tender reveries about being sweet to the girls that they adore from a distance. I'd like to think about them in a generous light -- that they are actually gentle young men -- but it's hard not to stereotype them as potential serial killers. It's their eerie, still blankness that makes me think they're capable of murder -- and the fact that I'm in the Midwest. The Midwest seems to cultivate serial killing. Must be the boxed in geography. (Jonathan Ames, Middle-American Gothic)

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!

All you need in politics is name recognition, even if the name is shit.

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.

There was a naughty grin on her face and she said, “Wait. You’ll get an erection and then what will I do?

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.

I’m kind of an upbeat Hamlet.

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.

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

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

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

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.

James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Charles Willeford’s Pick-Up. And more recently, Jean-Patrick Manchette’s The Prone Gunman, Sara Gran’s Come Closer, Jonathan Ames’s You Were Never Really Here.

James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice. Horace McCoy’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? Charles Willeford’s Pick-Up. And more recently, Jean-Patrick Manchette’s The Prone Gunman, Sara Gran’s Come Closer, Jonathan Ames’s You Were Never Really Here. I don’t

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.

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

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.

I'm an advocate of positive thinking, even if it's irrational positive thinking.

I'll be the first to admit it. My whole unconscious, well I'm somewhat conscious of it, outlook on life is built on the premise that I can't stand myself and should be shot. So, if people love you, it makes it difficult to go about your business of being blissfully self-destructive and impulsive.

It's always unnerving when people are loving.

At some point in America's history, gas stations metamorphosed into small grocery stores, specializing in foods - no doubt, also made from petroleum - meant to destroy one's health.

Praise a man’s penis and there’s not much he can’t do.

I'm and advocate of positive thinking, even if it's irrational positive thinking.

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.

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.