Jonathan Coe Quotations

The fact that it was a TV sitcom rather than a literary novel is neither here nor there, as far as I'm concerned.

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

So it was primarily a desire to write about that period in one's life rather than that period in history or in British culture or whatever.

From our perspective, the session was a success.

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!

Someone emailed me and said The Closed Circle reminded them of reading Trollope.

I'm shy of comparisons to Dickens because he's one of the absolute greats and it's silly to compare a contemporary novelist with someone.

Well, mainly it's because I'm not a writer who's comfortable with writing about periods that I can't remember firsthand.

I sometimes think that we fiction writers lag behind nonfiction counterparts in adventurousness, willingness to tackle forgotten areas of history but... we get there in the end.

So no, I'm pleased if it's been influential for many readers, but at the time I didn't even know that it was going to have any readers.

Also I had financial worries because it took four years to write and we were living off my wife's income all that time, which wasn't very great.

A biographer has to get as emotionally close to his/her subject as possible: otherwise the writing won't come to life at all.

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.

Everybody is excited by his experience and enthusiasm. Everybody is impressed.

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

I'm trying to write a nonfiction book at the moment, slot it in between the novels, and it really is like wading through quicksand compared to writing fiction.

I have to constantly rein in my nostalgia for the 1970s, in case it takes me over and I become one of those grumpy old men who just talks about how much better life was when he was a kid.

I don't know if England lags behind the States or is ahead of the States. We've finished with the '70s retro chic revival, we've done the '80s retro-chic revival and on to the '90s.

I don't know, I don't really have a view about what my contemporaries are doing, except that I enjoy individual writers and so on.

But we are entitled to look for continuity in politics.

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.

Well, I like the rain before it falls.

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.

I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I was going to say 'my friend Stuart', but I suppose he's not a friend any more. I seem to have lost a number of friends in the last few years. I don't mean that I've fallen out with them, in any dramatic way. We've just decided not to stay in touch. And that's what it's been: a decision, a conscious decision, because it's not difficult to stay in touch with people nowadays, there are so many different ways of doing it. But as you get older, I think that some friendships start to feel increasingly redundant. You just find yourself asking, "What's the point?" And then you stop.

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

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.

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.

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.

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.

But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.

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.

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.

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

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Objectivity is just male subjectivity.

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.