Quotes from Jonathan Coe

Save some pity for the Misfit, fighting on with bursting heart; Not a trace of common sense, his is no common flight. Save, save him some pity. But save the greater part For him that sees no glimmer of the Misfit's guiding light.

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.

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.

Take It and Like It

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

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

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

But we are entitled to look for continuity in politics.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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 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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

I don't mind summer rain. In fact I like it. It's my favourite sort.' 'Your favourite sort of rain?' said Thea. I remember that she was frowning, and pondering these words, and then she announced: 'Well, I like the rain before it falls.

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.

words are tricky little bastards, and very rarely say what you want them to say [...]