Jonathan Coe

“The past is a very determined ghost, haunting every second of the present.”

“There is always a moment in any kind of history when the story turns, when the momentum shifts, and everything that follows is different.”

“The great thing about books is that you can leave them untouched on a shelf for 10 years and they don't get any worse.”

“There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.”

“Satire is a way of looking at the world. It’s a way of saying that things aren’t as they should be.”

“Humour is a great way of engaging people, even if you're talking about serious things.”

“Most of my characters are romantic rather than sexual.”

“I find that the older I get, the more I dislike certainty.”

“We live in a world where there are a lot of lies, and it's hard to get to the truth.”

“Music has a power of forming the character, and should therefore be introduced into the education of the young.”

“Sleep is a little death, but a necessary one.”

“I think that the best stories are the ones that are told with a great deal of love.”

“A novel is a democratic form, it has to be. You have to be able to get inside the heads of all your characters.”