Explore Quotes by Jonathan Coe

Thatcherism has become bigger than she ever was.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I had no sense of any reputation that What a Carve Up! might acquire - at the time I didnt even have a publisher, so my main worry was whether it was even going to see the light of day or not.

Revisionist historians are about to get their hands on the Thatcher years, shes probably going to be looked at again because she feels far enough away now, and we dont see her much on the political landscape in this country, shes kind of disappeared and she doesnt speak out much anymore.

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.

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

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.