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.

— Jonathan Coe

Jonathan Coe Quotes

I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it – nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything Id attempted before, and that maybe my talent just wasnt up to it and the book would have to be abandoned, or would turn out not to work at all when it was finished.

— Jonathan Coe

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.

— Jonathan Coe

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

— Jonathan Coe

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

— Jonathan Coe

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.

— Jonathan Coe

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.

— Jonathan Coe

Am I the same person that I dream about?

— Jonathan Coe

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.

— Jonathan Coe

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.

— Jonathan Coe

Politics can make people do terrible things.

— Jonathan Coe

C’ erano poche cose altrettanto intime per lei che curiosare insiemeba qualcuno tra i libri.

— Jonathan Coe

Whatever else it throws at you, life will always have pleasures to offer. And we should take them.

— Jonathan Coe

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

— Jonathan Coe

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.

— Jonathan Coe

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.

— Jonathan Coe

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.

— Jonathan Coe

My daughter was right: young people do not notice the feelings of their parents, are not even aware that they have feelings, most of the time. They live in a blissful state of sociopathy, as far as their parents’ emotions are concerned.

— Jonathan Coe

As you get older, the hopes get smaller and the regrets get bigger. The challenge is to fight it. To stop the regrets from taking over.

— Jonathan Coe

My poverty was always a source of disappointment to her. If only she could have waited a few years.

— Jonathan Coe

In circumstances this desperate there is only one thing that can console me. I always keep at least three different kinds of Brie in the kitchen for emergency situations.

— Jonathan Coe
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