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All Jonathan Coe Quotes
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
61% of people like this quote
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
60% of people like this quote
They were written in the early '90s when I was strapped for cash.
Jonathan Coe
58% of people like this quote
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
56% of people like this quote
As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?
Jonathan Coe
55% of people like this quote
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
54% of people like this quote
Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do.
Jonathan Coe
54% of people like this quote
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
54% of people like this quote
You would go mad if you began to speculate about the impact your novel might have while you were still writing it.
Jonathan Coe
53% of people like this quote
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
53% of people like this quote
But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.
Jonathan Coe
53% of people like this quote
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
53% of people like this quote
The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's.
Jonathan Coe
52% of people like this quote
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