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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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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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