Quotes from Jonathan Coe

Half an hour later, as I was deeply immersed in the story of The Man of the Hill, that curious, lengthy digression which seems to have nothing to do with the main narrative but is in fact its cornerstone..

These days, every politician is a laughing-stock, and the laughter which occasionally used to illuminate the dark corners of the political world with dazzling, unexpected shafts of hilarity has become an unthinking reflex on our part, a tired Pavlovian reaction to situations that are too difficult or too depressing to think about clearly.

There's a fine line between forgetting an event, and suppressing the memory of it.

What did she die of? The same thing that gets everybody in the end: a combination of circumstances

Le auto sono come le persone. Ogni giorno andiamo in giro in mezzo alla ressa, corriamo di qua e di là, arrivando quasi a toccarci ma in realtà c'è pochissimo contatto. Tutti quegli scontri mancati. Tutte quelle opportunità perse. E' inquietante, a pensarci bene. Forse è meglio non pensarci affatto

cerca di non arrabbiarti troppo con chi pensa di conoscerti meglio di quanto tu conosca te stesso. Ha buone intenzioni.

Here I sat down and closed my eyes, tilting my face towards the sun and listening to the gentle lap of the blue water against the rocks. Perhaps it was my destiny, after all, to be always alone: that was the tragic, self-dramatizing thought that came to me, and in some paradoxical way it also brought me a kind of comfort, reconciling me to what seemed, at that moment, to be my essential nature: introverted, melancholy and solitary.

Politics can make people do terrible things

Can you make her out at all?' Benjamin shrugged. As usual, in Cicely's presence, he was afraid of appearing inarticulate, and as usual, this fear robbed him of his power of speech.

Well, he and his wife had both been devout evangelicals for a while. They had these two kids and then she had an incredible job giving birth to the next one. The upshot was that she lost her religion - with a vengeance - and walked out on him, taking these three daughters with her. Faith, Hope and Brenda.

So as well as hating you, they also hate them – whoever they are – these faceless people who are sitting in judgement over them somewhere, legislating on what they can and can't say out loud.

Billy might have known it for several months by now, and I might only just have begun to grasp it, but we had both come to the same realization: the realization that what we had to give, nobody really wanted any more

Benjamin had not dared, yet, to enquire about sales figures; as for the book's critical reception, it was non-existent. No reviews in either the national or local papers, of course, nothing on the various readers' websites and no reader reviews on Amazon - where it had a sales raking of 743,926 (or, if he wanted to cheer himself up, 493 in Bestsellers>Fiction>Literary Fiction>Autobiographical Fiction>Romance>Obsession).

Das Pub. Das Britannia. Ein uriges altes Wirtshaus, so britisch wie … der Bowlerhut und Fisch und Chips, stellvertretend für die beste Gastlichkeit, die unser Land zu bieten hat.« Mr Ellis erschauderte. »Die armen Belgier. Das wollen wir ihnen also zumuten, ja? Würstchen mit Kartoffelbrei und Schweinspastete von vorletzter Woche, heruntergespült mit einem Pint lauwarmes Bitter. Leute sind schon wegen weniger ausgewandert.«Ã¯Â¿Â½

It had been almost 7 o'clock, the end of a long working day. Of course he should've been at home with Emily by then, but that evening - as on many other evenings - he had told her that he needed to work late, not so that he could slip away and spend a few hours with his mistress (Benjamin would never have a mistress), but so that he could snatch 30 minutes solitude alone with a book and his thoughts before coming home to the deeper, more oppressive solitude of his shared domestic life.

The phallic symbolism of his plane, The Spirit of St. Louis, is obvious. Lindbergh, in effect, is trapped inside an enormous penis which carries him onwards to an inevitable destination which cannot be changed. Is this how you feel as a director, trapped inside your own masculinity?

The gods would be moving on, in other words; and I, a mere mortal, would be left behind, forgotten

And so they sit at home, getting fat on the proceedings and here we all are. Our businesses are failing, our jobs disappearing, our countryside choking, our hospitals crumbling, our homes being repossessed, our bodies being poisoned, our minds shutting down, the whole bloody spirit of the country crushed and fighting for breath. I hate the Winshaws, Fiona. Just look what they've done to us. Look what they've done to you.

because there comes a point where greed and madness can no longer be told apart. This dividing line is very thin, just like a belt of film surrounding the earth's sphere. It's a delicate blue, and this transition from the blue to the black is very gradual and lovely.

You're right, Margaret, absolutely right. Things have changed a lot, even since I've been here. It's a different place now. Better in some ways, worse in others. Better! she echoed, scornfully.

You know she wanted you to vote the other way. It's her future, you know. She's the one who's going to be around the longest.

but deep down he couldn't tell whether Nigel was joking or not. It was to become an increasingly familiar feeling over the next few years.

To the privileged, equality feels like a step down. Understand this and you understand a lot of populist politics today.' ?yad el-Baghdadi, Twitter, 1:36 p.m., 25 July 2016

Mi hija tenía razón: la gente joven no se fija en los sentimientos de sus padres, ni siquiera es consciente de ellos la mayor parte del tiempo. Viven en un bendito estado de sociopatía en lo que respecta a las emociones de sus padres.