Jonathan Coe Quotes - BrainyQuote

English - Novelist Born: August 19, 1961

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

Childhood People Happy Unlucky

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.

Know Something Relationships Personal

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.

Life People Real Only

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.

Personality Feel Sometimes Writing

But we are entitled to look for continuity in politics.

Politics Look Continuity Entitled

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

Writing Always One Thing Thing

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

Personality More Side Melancholy

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

Feel Never Comfortable Them

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.

Woman Control Choices Always

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.

Painting Sometimes Political Start

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

Me You Political Small

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

Politics You Start Writing

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!

History Time Think My Own

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.

Me Place More Places

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.

Life Work Culture Happy

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

You Go Writing Mad

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

Early Cash Were Written

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.

Money Wife Live Journalism

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.

Regret World Never America

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.

Alone Moment Ideas Down

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

Talent Problem Well Nonfiction

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.

Time Short Trouble Things

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

Time You Try Wrong

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.

Me You Feel Think

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.

She Become Bigger Than

Loading...

Load more quotes

Related Authors

Charles Dickens
Quotes

J. R. R. Tolkien
Quotes

Aldous Huxley
Quotes

William Golding
Quotes

E. M. Forster
Quotes

Thomas Hardy
Quotes

William Makepeace Thackeray
Quotes

Patrick O'Brian
Quotes

BrainyQuote

BrainyQuote Desktop

BrainyQuote Mobile

Site

Quote Of The Day

Social

BQ on Pinterest

BQ on Instagram

Apps

iPhone/iPad app

Quote Of The Day Feeds

Javascript and RSS feeds

WordPress plugin

Quote of the Day Email

About

Copyright © 2001 - 2019 BrainyQuote