Jonathan Coe quotes: top famous quotes and sayings by Jonathan Coe

Top Jonathan Coe Quotes

Browse top 39 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Jonathan Coe.

Favorite Jonathan Coe Quotes

1. "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." ~ Jonathan Coe

2. "Objectivity is just male subjectivity." ~ Jonathan Coe

3. "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." ~ Jonathan Coe

4. "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." ~ Jonathan Coe

5. "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." ~ Jonathan Coe

6. "Me gusta la lluvia antes de caer. Ya sé que no existe. Por eso es mi favorita. Porque no hace falta que algo sea de verdad para hacerte feliz, ¿no?." ~ Jonathan Coe

7. "[...] words are tricky little bastards, and very rarely say what you want them to say [...]" ~ Jonathan Coe

8. "As for human contact, I'd lost all appetite for it. Mankind has, as you may have noticed, become very inventive about devising new ways for people to avoid talking to each other and I'd been taking full advantage of the most recent ones. I would always send a text message rather than speak to someone on the phone. Rather than meeting with any of my friends, I would post cheerful, ironically worded status updates on Facebook, to show them all what a busy life I was leading. And presumably people had been enjoying them, because I'd got more than seventy friends on Facebook now, most of them complete strangers. But actual, face-to-face, let's-meet-for-a-coffee-and-catch-up sort of contact? I seemed to have forgotten what that was all about." ~ Jonathan Coe

9. "You didn't take part, Benjamin?" Gunther asked, as he passed me a plate of cheese and cold meat."My brother doesn't play games," said Paul. "He's an aesthete. He sat by the window all afternoon with a funny look on his face: probably composing a tone poem." ~ Jonathan Coe

10. ".. cerca di non arrabbiarti troppo con chi pensa di conoscerti meglio di quanto tu conosca te stesso. Ha buone intenzioni." ~ Jonathan Coe

11. "...he was the proud owner of a quite colossal member, which on the many awestruck occasions it had been exposed to public view had been compared variously to a giant frankfurter, an overfed python, a length of led piping, the trunk of a rogue elephant, a barrage balloon, an airport-sized Toblerone and a roll of wet wallpaper." ~ Jonathan Coe

12. "Yes, she would have been partial to men, perhaps she might even have confined herself to one man in particular, if only she had been able to find one who shared her view that intimacy between two people was of value irrespective of whether it led to sticky conflux." ~ Jonathan Coe

13. "He waited in silence for the blindfold to be tied firmly at the back of his head. ‘Right,' said Wilkins, emphatically. ‘That should do. How many fingers am I holding up?' ‘Three,' said Thomas. ‘God damn it to hell, how did you know that? Can you see through the cloth?' ‘No. It was a guess.' ‘Well you're not supposed to guess. For crying out loud, I'm trying to make sure that you can't see where we're going. We're not here to play guessing games. How many fingers am I holding up?' ‘I've no idea. I can't see a bloody thing.' ‘Good. It was four, by the way. Not that it matters. Now shut up." ~ Jonathan Coe

14. "His thoughts-if you can use that word about a dog, particularly one as stupid as Bonaparte-were simply fixed, with absolute determination, upon the distant horizon, and he was not going to stop until he had reached it." ~ Jonathan Coe

15. "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" ~ Jonathan Coe

16. "A volte mi sento come se fossi destinato a essere sempre dietro le quinte quando arriva una scena madre. Come se Dio mi avesse scelto come vittima di un cosmico tiro mancino, assegnandomi poco più di una comparsata nella mia vita. Altre volte mi sento come se non avessi altro role che quello dello spettatore di storie di altra gente e per di più fossi condannato a lasciare il mio posto sempre al momento cruciale, e andare in cucina a farmi una tazza di tea proprio quando arriva la resa dei conti" ~ Jonathan Coe

17. "Live life as it was meant to be lived. Half asleep, preferably.[...]She preferred [...] to go to sleep at once, sleep now being one of the very few aspects of existence for which she felt any degree of enthusiasm [...]" ~ Jonathan Coe

18. "[...] these questions gave way, in the course of time, to a different preoccupation, namely, a slow and growing awareness of familiarity with the landscape into which she was being carried. A familiarity based not on the sighting of particular landmarks, but on her feeling that the very contours of the hills and fields, and the very shapes and colours of the buildings, now appeared as surviving monuments to the existence of a much earlier self whom she had long forgotten. She knew, of course, that they could not bring that self back to life, perish the thought, but they reminded her of it in a way which she did not find disagreeable." ~ Jonathan Coe

19. "Quello che in letteratura la gente chiama ironia, di solito nella vita vera si chiama dolore, incomprensione e disgrazia [...]." ~ Jonathan Coe

20. "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." ~ Jonathan Coe

21. "Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are." ~ Jonathan Coe

22. "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

23. "Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem." ~ Jonathan Coe

24. "As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?" ~ Jonathan Coe

25. "But we are entitled to look for continuity in politics." ~ Jonathan Coe

26. "Yes - I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm sure I could repeat them perfectly." ~ Jonathan Coe

27. "...quando perdi qualcuno e questo qualcuno ti manca, tu soffri perché la persona assente si è trasformata in un essere immaginario: irreale. Ma il tuo desiderio di lei non è immaginario. Così è a quello che devi aggrapparti: al desiderio. Perché è reale." ~ Jonathan Coe

28. "Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was." ~ Jonathan Coe

29. "The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's." ~ Jonathan Coe

30. "They were written in the early '90s when I was strapped for cash." ~ Jonathan Coe

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

32. "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." ~ Jonathan Coe

33. "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

34. "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." ~ Jonathan Coe

35. "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." ~ Jonathan Coe

36. "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!" ~ Jonathan Coe

37. "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." ~ Jonathan Coe

38. "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

39. "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

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