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"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."
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"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."
Explore more quotes by Jonathan Coe

"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."

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

"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."

"But at the same time, I have trouble keeping things out of books, which is why I don't write short stories because they turn into novels."

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

"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."

"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."
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