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Jonathan Coe

"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."

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Asa Don Brown

"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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Jonathan Coe
"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."
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Jonathan Coe
"But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons."
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Jonathan Coe
"As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you?"
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Jonathan Coe
"The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's."
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Jonathan Coe
"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."
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Jonathan Coe
"Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are."
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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."
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Jonathan Coe
"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."
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Jonathan Coe
"Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem."
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Jonathan Coe
"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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