Jonathan Coe Quotes

Quotes about:

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

Real, Fall, Rain

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Some people don't realize that a straight 'No' can be the kindest answer in the world.

Jonathan Coe

People, Answers, World

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Objectivity is just male subjectivity.

Jonathan Coe

Objectivity, Males, Subjectivity

"Co-Creation: From the Outside Looking In" by Ken Carbone, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 11, 2016.

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We say, 'Shall we meet for a drink?', as though drinking were the main end of the appointment, and the matter of company only incidental, we are so shy about admitting our need for one another.[...]We say, 'Would you like to come for some coffee?', as though it were less frightening to acknowledge that we are heavily dependent on mildly stimulating drinks, than to acknowledge that we are at all dependent on the companionship of other people.

Jonathan Coe

Drinking, Coffee, People

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I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood.

Jonathan Coe

People, Childhood, Unlucky

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Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem.

Jonathan Coe

Fiction And Nonfiction, Talent, Problem

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As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?

Jonathan Coe

Writing, Humans, Human Beings

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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

Wife, Feelings, Sides

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Sometimes I feel that I am destined always to be offstage whenever the main action occurs. That God has made me the victim of some cosmic practical joke, by assigning me little more than a walk-on part in my own life. Or sometimes I feel that my role is simply to be a spectator to other people's stories, and always to wander away at the most important moment, drifiting into the kitchen to make a cup of tea just as the denouement unfolds.

Jonathan Coe

People, Kitchen, Tea

Jonathan Coe (2001). “The rotters' club”

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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

Real, Knowing, Cynical

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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

Ideas, Space, Narrative

"Likely lads' return" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. August 21, 2004.

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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

Mistake, Eye, Way To Live

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You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.

Jonathan Coe

Writing, Impact, Mad

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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

Country, Book, Two

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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

Book, Political, Ambitious

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Well, I like the rain before it falls.

Jonathan Coe

Rain, Fall, Wells

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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

Writing, Political, Intimate

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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

Writing, Wife, Littles

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Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are.

Jonathan Coe

Labels, Feels, Accurate

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The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's.

Jonathan Coe

Personality, Sides, Tunes

"Likely lads' return" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. August 21, 2004.

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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

Regret, Book, Successful

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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

Light, Worry, Might

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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

Choices, Individual, Attempting

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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

Book, Writing, Stories

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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

Littles, Britain, Contemporary

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Born: August 19, 1961
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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