“I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.”
―
Jonathan Coe,
The Rain Before It Falls
“Some people don't realize that a straight 'No' can be the kindest answer in the world.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Dwarves of Death
“Sometimes I feel that I am destined always to be offstage whenever the main action occurs. That God has made me the victim of some cosmic practical joke, by assigning me little more than a walk-on part in my own life. Or sometimes I feel that my role is simply to be a spectator to other people's stories, and always to wander away at the most important moment, drifiting into the kitchen to make a cup of tea just as the denouement unfolds.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rotters' Club
“Yes - I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm sure I could repeat them perfectly.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Closed Circle
“Objectivity is just male subjectivity.” ― Jonathan Coe, The House of Sleep
“I don't mind summer rain. In fact I like it. It's my favourite sort.' 'Your favourite sort of rain?' said Thea. I remember that she was frowning, and pondering these words, and then she announced: 'Well, I like the rain before it falls.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before it Falls
“The plain fact is that she never really liked me, and never wanted me. I had been a mistake; and that, to some extent, is what I remain in my own eyes, to this day. The knowledge never goes, can never be undone. You just have to find a way to live with it.” ― Jonathan Coe
“[...] words are tricky little bastards, and very rarely say what you want them to say [...]” ― Jonathan Coe, The Accidental Woman
“We say, ‘Shall we meet for a drink?’, as though drinking were the main end of the appointment, and the matter of company only incidental, we are so shy about admitting our need for one another.[...]We say, ‘Would you like to come for some coffee?’, as though it were less frightening to acknowledge that we are heavily dependent on mildly stimulating drinks, than to acknowledge that we are at all dependent on the companionship of other people.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Accidental Woman
“I was going to say 'my friend Stuart', but I suppose he's not a friend any more. I seem to have lost a number of friends in the last few years. I don't mean that I've fallen out with them, in any dramatic way. We've just decided not to stay in touch. And that's what it's been: a decision, a conscious decision, because it's not difficult to stay in touch with people nowadays, there are so many different ways of doing it. But as you get older, I think that some friendships start to feel increasingly redundant. You just find yourself asking, "What's the point?" And then you stop.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim
“...quando perdi qualcuno e questo qualcuno ti manca, tu soffri perché la persona assente si è trasformata in un essere immaginario: irreale. Ma il tuo desiderio di lei non è immaginario. Così è a quello che devi aggrapparti: al desiderio. Perché è reale.” ― Jonathan Coe, The House of Sleep
“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, What a Carve Up!
“Whatever else it throws at you, life will always have pleasures to offer. And we should take them” ― Jonathan Coe, Mr Wilder & Me
“These pieces, he already realised, were merely stepping stones at the start of a journey towards something - some grand artefact, either musical, or literary, or filmic, or perhaps a combination of all three - towards which he knew he was advancing, slowly but with a steady, inexorable tread. Something which would enshrine his feelings for Cicely, and which she would perhaps hear, or read, or see in ten or twenty years' time, and suddenly realize, on her pulse, that it was created for her, intended for her, and that of all the boys who had swarmed around her like so many drones at school, Benjamin had been, without her having the wit to notice it, by far the purest in heart, by far the most gifted and giving. On that day the awareness of all she had missed, all she had lost, would finally break upon her in an instant, and she would weep; weep for her foolishness, and of the love that might have been between them.Of course, Benjamin could always just have spoken to her, gone up to her in the bus queue and asked her for a date. But this seemed to him, on the whole, the more satisfactory approach.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rotters' Club
“Am I the same person that I dream about?” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rotters' Club
“As for human contact, I'd lost all appetite for it. Mankind has, as you may have noticed, become very inventive about devising new ways for people to avoid talking to each other and I'd been taking full advantage of the most recent ones. I would always send a text message rather than speak to someone on the phone. Rather than meeting with any of my friends, I would post cheerful, ironically worded status updates on Facebook, to show them all what a busy life I was leading. And presumably people had been enjoying them, because I'd got more than seventy friends on Facebook now, most of them complete strangers. But actual, face-to-face, let's-meet-for-a-coffee-and-catch-up sort of contact? I seemed to have forgotten what that was all about.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim
“They sat and drank their pints. The tables in which their faces were dimly reflected were dark brown, the darkest brown, the colour of Bournville chocolate. The walls were a lighter brown, the colour of Dairy Milk. The carpet was brown, with little hexagons of a slightly different brown, if you looked closely. The ceiling was meant to be off-white, but was in fact brown, browned by the nicotine smoke of a million unfiltered cigarettes. Most of the cars in the car park were brown, as were most of the clothes worn by the patrons. Nobody in the pub really noticed the predominance of brown, or if they did, thought it worth remarking upon. These were brown times.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rotters' Club
“Me gusta la lluvia antes de caer. Ya sé que no existe. Por eso es mi favorita. Porque no hace falta que algo sea de verdad para hacerte feliz, ¿no?.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before it Falls
“Your gravity, your grace have turned a tideIn me, no lunar power can reverse;But in your narcoleptic eyes I spiedA sightlessness tonight: or something worse,A disregard that made me feel unmanned.Meanwhile, insomniac, I catch my breathTo think I saw my future traced in sandOne afternoon "as still, as carved, as death,”And pray for an oblivion so deepIt ends in transformation. Only dawnCan save me, flood this haunted house of sleepWith light, and drown the thoughts that nightly warn:Another lifetime is the least you’ll need, to traceThe guarded secrets of her gravity, her grace.” ― Jonathan Coe, The House of Sleep
“Some people don't realize that a straight 'No' can be the kindest answer in the world.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Dwarves of Death
“Sometimes I feel that I am destined always to be offstage whenever the main action occurs. That God has made me the victim of some cosmic practical joke, by assigning me little more than a walk-on part in my own life. Or sometimes I feel that my role is simply to be a spectator to other people's stories, and always to wander away at the most important moment, drifiting into the kitchen to make a cup of tea just as the denouement unfolds.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rotters' Club
“Yes - I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm sure I could repeat them perfectly.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Closed Circle
“Objectivity is just male subjectivity.” ― Jonathan Coe, The House of Sleep
“I don't mind summer rain. In fact I like it. It's my favourite sort.' 'Your favourite sort of rain?' said Thea. I remember that she was frowning, and pondering these words, and then she announced: 'Well, I like the rain before it falls.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before it Falls
“The plain fact is that she never really liked me, and never wanted me. I had been a mistake; and that, to some extent, is what I remain in my own eyes, to this day. The knowledge never goes, can never be undone. You just have to find a way to live with it.” ― Jonathan Coe
“[...] words are tricky little bastards, and very rarely say what you want them to say [...]” ― Jonathan Coe, The Accidental Woman
“We say, ‘Shall we meet for a drink?’, as though drinking were the main end of the appointment, and the matter of company only incidental, we are so shy about admitting our need for one another.[...]We say, ‘Would you like to come for some coffee?’, as though it were less frightening to acknowledge that we are heavily dependent on mildly stimulating drinks, than to acknowledge that we are at all dependent on the companionship of other people.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Accidental Woman
“I was going to say 'my friend Stuart', but I suppose he's not a friend any more. I seem to have lost a number of friends in the last few years. I don't mean that I've fallen out with them, in any dramatic way. We've just decided not to stay in touch. And that's what it's been: a decision, a conscious decision, because it's not difficult to stay in touch with people nowadays, there are so many different ways of doing it. But as you get older, I think that some friendships start to feel increasingly redundant. You just find yourself asking, "What's the point?" And then you stop.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim
“...quando perdi qualcuno e questo qualcuno ti manca, tu soffri perché la persona assente si è trasformata in un essere immaginario: irreale. Ma il tuo desiderio di lei non è immaginario. Così è a quello che devi aggrapparti: al desiderio. Perché è reale.” ― Jonathan Coe, The House of Sleep
“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, What a Carve Up!
“Whatever else it throws at you, life will always have pleasures to offer. And we should take them” ― Jonathan Coe, Mr Wilder & Me
“These pieces, he already realised, were merely stepping stones at the start of a journey towards something - some grand artefact, either musical, or literary, or filmic, or perhaps a combination of all three - towards which he knew he was advancing, slowly but with a steady, inexorable tread. Something which would enshrine his feelings for Cicely, and which she would perhaps hear, or read, or see in ten or twenty years' time, and suddenly realize, on her pulse, that it was created for her, intended for her, and that of all the boys who had swarmed around her like so many drones at school, Benjamin had been, without her having the wit to notice it, by far the purest in heart, by far the most gifted and giving. On that day the awareness of all she had missed, all she had lost, would finally break upon her in an instant, and she would weep; weep for her foolishness, and of the love that might have been between them.Of course, Benjamin could always just have spoken to her, gone up to her in the bus queue and asked her for a date. But this seemed to him, on the whole, the more satisfactory approach.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rotters' Club
“Am I the same person that I dream about?” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rotters' Club
“As for human contact, I'd lost all appetite for it. Mankind has, as you may have noticed, become very inventive about devising new ways for people to avoid talking to each other and I'd been taking full advantage of the most recent ones. I would always send a text message rather than speak to someone on the phone. Rather than meeting with any of my friends, I would post cheerful, ironically worded status updates on Facebook, to show them all what a busy life I was leading. And presumably people had been enjoying them, because I'd got more than seventy friends on Facebook now, most of them complete strangers. But actual, face-to-face, let's-meet-for-a-coffee-and-catch-up sort of contact? I seemed to have forgotten what that was all about.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim
“They sat and drank their pints. The tables in which their faces were dimly reflected were dark brown, the darkest brown, the colour of Bournville chocolate. The walls were a lighter brown, the colour of Dairy Milk. The carpet was brown, with little hexagons of a slightly different brown, if you looked closely. The ceiling was meant to be off-white, but was in fact brown, browned by the nicotine smoke of a million unfiltered cigarettes. Most of the cars in the car park were brown, as were most of the clothes worn by the patrons. Nobody in the pub really noticed the predominance of brown, or if they did, thought it worth remarking upon. These were brown times.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rotters' Club
“Me gusta la lluvia antes de caer. Ya sé que no existe. Por eso es mi favorita. Porque no hace falta que algo sea de verdad para hacerte feliz, ¿no?.” ― Jonathan Coe, The Rain Before it Falls
“Your gravity, your grace have turned a tideIn me, no lunar power can reverse;But in your narcoleptic eyes I spiedA sightlessness tonight: or something worse,A disregard that made me feel unmanned.Meanwhile, insomniac, I catch my breathTo think I saw my future traced in sandOne afternoon "as still, as carved, as death,”And pray for an oblivion so deepIt ends in transformation. Only dawnCan save me, flood this haunted house of sleepWith light, and drown the thoughts that nightly warn:Another lifetime is the least you’ll need, to traceThe guarded secrets of her gravity, her grace.” ― Jonathan Coe, The House of Sleep
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