I'm a somewhat isolated person in my own way, or I move along a little trail, I go this place, I go that place. It's not like I'm varying my exposure.

Jonathan Ames

Categorized in : Place Person Way My Own

I'm also not sure that I look up to others as knowing what the hell is going on, except maybe Andre Agassi, who, when I interviewed him, while covering the U.S. Open, seemed to know what was going on. My basic assumption is that we're all confused all the time. Some people do act more confident, though. Maybe they aren't confused. I am. I'm confused.

confused knowing people

No one I interact with - except maybe for family and strangers at the Russian baths and other weird places I may go to - is just friends or lovers with me: they also know something of my writing and this distorts their take on me.

just-friends writing may

A lot of readers have actually helped me, been really sweet to me... So maybe my cry for help has sometimes been answered.

helping sweet sometimes

I always liked those characters in 'True Blood' who could turn into animals. I'd love to be an animal of some kind and run quickly through a forest.

running animal character

I wish we had a dog in the show so that I could get to be a dog f... by Jonathan Ames

I wish we had a dog in the show so that I could get to be a dog for a day.

shows dog wish

From age 23 to 44 - I'm 45 now - I was always in need of money, and I was especially in need of it from 23 to about 34, and my great aunt would always give me money, a hundred bucks, every two months or so, and a lot of times that hundred bucks made a huge difference - I could eat or pay a small bill. It kept me going. She gave me money. It was very loving.

aunt differences two

Then again, the name, the associations with a writer's name, can add to the reader's entertainment and pleasure.

association names add

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.

think me mind people

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.

how see always writing

No, I'm not very productive at all. I'm probably like an animal. I mean, great animals in the ocean feed all the time. I'm someone who procrastinates, worries, for most of a month, and then I'll have a flurry of manic productivity with a sense of great urgency and fear for, like, two days.

great ocean fear time

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.

things masculinity boxing want

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.

know doubt sometimes world

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.

good myself personality teacher