Quotes by Jonathan Coe

About Jonathan Coe:

Jonathan Coe is an English novelist and writer. His work has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! reworks the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name. It is set within the "carve up" of the UK's resources which was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's right wing Conservative governments of the 1980s.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Yes - I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm sure I could repeat them perfectly.

Jonathan Coe

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

...quando perdi qualcuno e questo qualcuno ti manca, tu soffri perché la persona assente si è trasformata in un essere immaginario: irreale. Ma il tuo desiderio di lei non è immaginario. Così è a quello che devi aggrapparti: al desiderio. Perch�...

Jonathan Coe

Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do.

Jonathan Coe

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

Jonathan Coe

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

Jonathan Coe

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Coe

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 ...

Jonathan Coe

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

Jonathan Coe

They were written in the early '90s when I was strapped for cash.

Jonathan Coe

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

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

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

Jonathan Coe

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

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.

Jonathan Coe

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

Author Bio

  • NameJonathan Coe
  • DescriptionEnglish novelist
  • BornAugust 19, 1961
  • CountryEngland
  • ProfessionWriter
  • AwardsJohn Llewellyn Rhys Prize; Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize