Top 51 Jonathan Coe Quotes
#2. I had no sense of any reputation that What a Carve Up! might acquire - at the time I didnt even have a publisher, so my main worry was whether it was even going to see the light of day or not.
Jonathan Coe
#3. But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.
Jonathan Coe
#4. I became quite taken over by Johnson's personality at some points while writing the biography, and since I went straight on to The Closed Circle afterwards, I did sometimes feel I could hear him whispering in my ear while I was working on it.
Jonathan Coe
#5. Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.
Jonathan Coe
#6. Yes, she would have been partial to men, perhaps she might even have confined herself to one man in particular, if only she had been able to find one who shared her view that intimacy between two people was of value irrespective of whether it led to sticky conflux.
Jonathan Coe
#7. But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels.
Jonathan Coe
#8. I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history.
Jonathan Coe
#9. Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem.
Jonathan Coe
#10. The upshot was that she lost her religion - with a vengeance - and walked out on him, taking these three daughters with her. Faith, Hope and Brenda.
Jonathan Coe
#11. Live life as it was meant to be lived. Half asleep, preferably.
[...]
She preferred [...] to go to sleep at once, sleep now being one of the very few aspects of existence for which she felt any degree of enthusiasm [...]
Jonathan Coe
#12. Half an hour later, as I was deeply immersed in the story of The Man of the Hill, that curious, lengthy digression which seems to have nothing to do with the main narrative but is in fact its cornerstone..
Jonathan Coe
#13. There's a fine line between forgetting an event, and suppressing the memory of it.
Jonathan Coe
#14. The plain fact is that she never really liked me, and never wanted me. I had been a mistake; and that, to some extent, is what I remain in my own eyes, to this day. The knowledge never goes, can never be undone. You just have to find a way to live with it.
Jonathan Coe
#15. Can you make her out at all?'
Benjamin shrugged. As usual, in Cicely's presence, he was afraid of appearing inarticulate, and as usual, this fear robbed him of his power of speech.
Jonathan Coe
#16. This is the crazed, manic energy of the bull at the end of the fight, fatally wounded but ploughing ahead, driven only by pain and anger and the mindless will to go on living.
Jonathan Coe
#17. For many weeks after [my wife] died, I could not get used to the feeling of coldness and lifelessness on her side of the bed - and it was even worse when they took the body away and buried her.
Jonathan Coe
#19. As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism.
Jonathan Coe
#20. I don't mind summer rain. In fact I like it. It's my favourite sort.' 'Your favourite sort of rain?' said Thea. I remember that she was frowning, and pondering these words, and then she announced: 'Well, I like the rain before it falls.
Jonathan Coe
#21. But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.
Jonathan Coe
#22. Revisionist historians are about to get their hands on the Thatcher years, shes probably going to be looked at again because she feels far enough away now, and we dont see her much on the political landscape in this country, shes kind of disappeared and she doesnt speak out much anymore.
Jonathan Coe
#23. His thoughts-if you can use that word about a dog, particularly one as stupid as Bonaparte-were simply fixed, with absolute determination, upon the distant horizon, and he was not going to stop until he had reached it.
Jonathan Coe
#24. It's only a drawback in the States, where most people seem to have no real interest in other countries and the notion of a novel which might offer insight into life in the UK doesn't seem to appeal very widely.
Jonathan Coe
#25. [ ... ] words are tricky little bastards, and very rarely say what you want them to say [ ... ]
Jonathan Coe
#26. You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.
Jonathan Coe
#27. Don't you know what a pussy is, sir?'
'Of course he doesn't. He hasn't even seen Basic Instinct.
Jonathan Coe
#28. As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?
Jonathan Coe
#29. Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.
Jonathan Coe
#30. The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's.
Jonathan Coe
#31. The writer I feel the most affinity with - you said you felt my books are 19th century novels, I think they're 18th century novels - is Fielding, Henry Fielding, he's the guy who does it for me.
Jonathan Coe
#32. I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning.
Jonathan Coe
#33. I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.
Jonathan Coe
#35. Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do.
Jonathan Coe
#36. I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it - nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything Id attempted before, and that maybe my talent just wasnt up to it and the book would have to be abandoned, or would turn out not to work at all when it was finished.
Jonathan Coe
#37. Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.
Jonathan Coe
#38. I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.
Jonathan Coe
#39. I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.
Jonathan Coe
#40. I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about!
Jonathan Coe
#41. You're right, Margaret, absolutely right. Things have changed a lot, even since I've been here. It's a different place now. Better in some ways, worse in others."
"Better!" she echoed, scornfully.
Jonathan Coe
#42. As the books grew bigger and more ambitious, the situations in question sometimes became political ones, and so it became necessary to start painting in the social background on a scale which eventually became panoramic.
Jonathan Coe
#43. My only regret is that I signed away the world rights and in America they've been far and away my most successful books, but I never saw a cent from any of it.
Jonathan Coe
#44. Some people don't realize that a straight 'No' can be the kindest answer in the world.
Jonathan Coe
#45. You didn't take part, Benjamin?" Gunther asked, as he passed me a plate of cheese and cold meat.
"My brother doesn't play games," said Paul. "He's an aesthete. He sat by the window all afternoon with a funny look on his face: probably composing a tone poem.
Jonathan Coe
#46. It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.
Jonathan Coe
#48. But we are entitled to look for continuity in politics.
Jonathan Coe
#49. Yes - I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm sure I could repeat them perfectly.
Jonathan Coe
#50. They were written in the early '90s when I was strapped for cash.
Jonathan Coe
#51. The biggest markets for my books outside the UK are France and Italy, and those are the two countries where I also have the closest personal relationships with my translators - I don't know whether that's a coincidence, or if there's something to be learned from it.
Jonathan Coe
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