Jonathan Ames Quotes

I defer to all these other American poets who, for some reason, I both envy and admire.

In college, I had a lot of friends who were writers and wanted to be writers and I felt intimidated by it. I just didn't know if I had any gift or voice and I had no confidence about it.

I'm not a great writer.

Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good writer.

You know, looking at it objectively, I've written one or two good books.

I never dreamt I could be an author when I grew up. It just didn't occur to me, because I thought you had to be a) academic, so go to university, things like that, and I didn't think I was clever, or b) dead because I just assumed all the authors in the library were dead.

The fact remains that I am a very artless and incompetent writer.

I've never loved composing, because I feel like other people do it better.

I've always been a very prolific writer.

Oh, I'm a pretty bad poet. This has been corroborated by others.

I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.

For a writer, published works are like fallen flowers, but the expected new work is like a calyx waiting to blossom.

I don't think I'm any competition to the already-existing canon of writers in Kannada. How can I ever even think of comparing myself?

There are plenty of clever young writers. But there is too much genius, not enough talent.

It is part of a poor spirit to undervalue himself and blush.

It's a bit of a crapshoot out there with young writers right now anyway.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

I knew I'd always be a second-rate academic, and I thought, 'Well, I'd rather be a second-rate novelist or even a third-rate one'.

Sometimes I get jealous when I'm reading a great book by a younger writer. But 'White Tiger' is so good, I almost forgot to hate Aravind Adiga.

My position as the best-selling author at E! is secure - unless Salman Rushdie develops a show with them.

I grew up as a child who felt she was very inferior to everyone else.

If you look at how much Hank Williams did by 29 years old, it makes you feel pretty worthless.

I know that I'm probably far more pedestrian and less talented than many who dreamed of becoming writers but couldn't see the road so easily.

To write fiction is to think that you're doing it wrong - that your work habits are inhibiting you; that you've chosen the wrong subject; that you've chosen the right subject, but that someone else has, unbeknownst to you, already written exactly the book you're laboring over.

When your Dad was the creator of 'Moby Dick' you kind of steer clear of getting compared in a solo-ing aspect.