Coe Quotes & Sayings

I've written songs about things that nobody else has ever written about. — David Allan Coe

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

My motivation to compete was always about improving one year to the next. At 34, I realised I'd never run any quicker, so why hang on? But I love running and still run along woodland trails and beaches every few days. — Sebastian Coe

Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide
In me, no lunar power can reverse;
But in your narcoleptic eyes I spied
A sightlessness tonight: or something worse,
A disregard that made me feel unmanned.
Meanwhile, insomniac, I catch my breath
To think I saw my future traced in sand
One afternoon "as still, as carved, as death,"
And pray for an oblivion so deep
It ends in transformation. Only dawn
Can save me, flood this haunted house of sleep
With light, and drown the thoughts that nightly warn:
Another lifetime is the least you'll need, to trace
The guarded secrets of her gravity, her grace. — Jonathan Coe

Everyone is extremely hard and troubled to be around. Everyone has something substantially wrong with them. Everyone is extremely hard to live with. — Alain De Botton

My mother was Indian, brought up in Delhi. My grandparents were born in Bow and Poplar. — Sebastian Coe

I imagined a book that was both written and curated. I wanted readers to see my research, to explore the archival mix, connect with the material, and draw their own conclusions. — Alexis Coe

Nobody ever becomes an expert parent. But I think good parenting is about consistency. It's about being there at big moments, but it's also just the consistency of decision making. And it's routine. — Sebastian Coe

Guy Kay is probably my favorite and the writer I most want to emulate. — David B. Coe

You hope all good athletes run on the balls of their feet. You don't want them coming down heel first. The perfect style is the foot to come down with a slight supination and on a tilt to the outside. — Sebastian Coe

It is the Bohemian fad to expatriate himself, to seek strange and bizarre environments. As soon as a place begins to attract civilization he flees it for some new hiding place. When he chooses a Chinese dinner he must have a restaurant where no white man has ever before trod, if he can find one. . . . As soon as others begin to frequent it also, again he flies.27 — Andrew Coe

I do genuinely believe that young people who play sport at a competitive level, sensibly controlled, sensibly organised, that has to be a good thing. It will teach them to win, it will teach them to lose with dignity and magnanimity - all the things you want. It's a pretty good metaphor for life. — Sebastian Coe

The Beatles were just the beginning of everything music could be, just like the Stones I was Rolling along like a ship lost out on the sea. — David Allan Coe

Marty Robbins once sang you give me a mountain, I've been given a few mountains in my life. — David Allan Coe

I started track and field when I was 12 and didn't get to an Olympic Games until I was nearly 23. By any stretch of the imagination that's a very long apprenticeship. — Sebastian Coe

To anyone who has started out on a long campaign believing that the gold medal was destined for him, the feeling when, all of a sudden, the medal has gone somewhere else is quite indescribable. — Sebastian Coe

I'm not sure there are enough coaches in the system that can take young talent and consistently get them into the top five in the world. — Sebastian Coe

As I said, I had no publisher for What a Carve Up! while I was writing it, so all we had to live off was my wife's money and little bits I was picking up for journalism. — Jonathan Coe

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

I listen to instrumental jazz and bluegrass, but aside from my AM workout, I have no rituals. — David B. 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. — Jonathan Coe

All pressure is self-inflicted. It's what you make of it or how you let it rub off on you. — Sebastian Coe

Yes, she would have been partial to men, perhaps she might even have confined herself to one man in particular, if only she had been able to find one who shared her view that intimacy between two people was of value irrespective of whether it led to sticky conflux. — Jonathan Coe

There is nothing so marginal as a party that has been in power for 18 years and slides into opposition. You influence nothing. — Sebastian Coe

Tomorrow is another day, and there will be another battle! — Sebastian Coe

I'm not the most talented writer in the world. I know that. But I also know that I'm disciplined, that I work my butt off, and that I make myself write as much as I can. Writer's block is a luxury I can't afford. I'm a professional writer, which means that I put my butt in the chair each day, and I write. Simple as that. — David B. Coe

Guy Gavriel Kay's 'Tigana' is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best fantasy novel ever written. It's beautifully written, the characters are unforgettable, the worldbuilding is exquisite. — David B. Coe

I don't want to go back into politics - absolutely not. — Sebastian Coe

I might have to consider coaching- I'm getting too old to be a world class runner and my mind isn't gone enough to become an official. — Sebastian Coe

Jonathan Coe's genial, likeable novel can only be described as a kind of lit-prog-rock concept album ( ... ) Coe recreates the period with such loving accuracy that I frankly suspect him of having planted a secret microphone in the tin Oxford Mathematical Instruments box I carried around in my school days. ( ... ) (A)s always with Jonathan Coe, the sheer intelligent good nature that suffuses his work makes it a pleasure to read. — Peter Bradshaw

Wrote my first "novel" when I was six. Studied a bit in college, but then pursued history ... But when I started writing professionally, it was mostly learn as you go. — David B. Coe

In the mind of the public, she seemed endowed with an almost supernatural power to commit heinous acts, no matter the time or place. — Alexis Coe

Well, I like the rain before it falls. — Jonathan Coe

Marathons don't come to you overnight. — Sebastian Coe

I actually don't believe in big government, and half the time I'm never quite sure I believe in government, generally. — Sebastian Coe

[...] these questions gave way, in the course of time, to a different preoccupation, namely, a slow and growing awareness of familiarity with the landscape into which she was being carried. A familiarity based not on the sighting of particular landmarks, but on her feeling that the very contours of the hills and fields, and the very shapes and colours of the buildings, now appeared as surviving monuments to the existence of a much earlier self whom she had long forgotten. She knew, of course, that they could not bring that self back to life, perish the thought, but they reminded her of it in a way which she did not find disagreeable. — Jonathan Coe

Am I the same person that I dream about? — Jonathan Coe

The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's. — Jonathan Coe

There's a fine line between forgetting an event, and suppressing the memory of it. — Jonathan Coe

In all Games, there is always a tendency, particularly in the lead up to the Games when there isn't much sport to talk about, to write about things that are not sport. — Sebastian Coe

The Olympics are a world apart from racing for a record. You put out of your mind pretty much what anyone else doing in the race. — Sebastian Coe

I can't speak in too much detail about a book or story I'm working on because I find that it takes the energy out of my writing. When I begin to work, it's like a soda bottle that's been jostled before it's opened. There's a lot of pent up energy in there. I have to let it out slowly, carefully, so that I can turn it into a written work. — David B. Coe

I've always referred to my father as 'my coach' because we were always able to separate our relationship into the roles of coach and parent. — Sebastian Coe

Fear cannot stay in the same house as Jesus Christ. — Jack Coe

I think it's also the case that I'm not as widely travelled, or as well-educated in history, as most of the other novelists I meet: so I have to write about my own country, at the present time, because it's more or less all I know about! — Jonathan Coe

The best writing advice I ever got was "Keep moving forward, don't retreat into rewrites." The worst came from a book that said "Writing fiction is like telling lies," which just seems stupid to me. — David B. Coe

Vision is a romantic thing. We have got into 'talent identification'. I am much more interested in passion - finding people who are really excited about doing something. — Sebastian Coe

My mum was critical in getting me to recognise very early on that although what I was doing was pretty serious, quite selfish, and probably to most people pretty obsessive, there actually was more to life than running quickly twice round a track. — Sebastian Coe

This is the crazed, manic energy of the bull at the end of the fight, fatally wounded but ploughing ahead, driven only by pain and anger and the mindless will to go on living. — Jonathan Coe

I had no sense of any reputation that What a Carve Up! might acquire - at the time I didnt even have a publisher, so my main worry was whether it was even going to see the light of day or not. — Jonathan Coe

Teach my children to love! They'll learn to hate on their own. — David Allan Coe

But I have always - ever since The Accidental Woman - written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control. — Jonathan Coe

Inspirational leaders need to have a winning mentality in order to inspire respect. It is hard to trust in the leadership of someone who is half-hearted about their purpose, or only sporadic in focus or enthusiasm. — Sebastian Coe

I ain't gonna lie. I like having my girl take care of me this way. I can't wait 'til she finish high school and we can live together somewhere on our own. I'ma support her while she in college, pay all the bills and shit, and she can take care of me like this everyday. Man, that's the way I wanna be living. — Coe Booth

There may be problems we still need to tease out, but we will leave no stone unturned in our bid to make London the host city. — Sebastian Coe

Sport was an integral part of school life. The most influential teachers were not necessarily the PE teachers, but the teachers who helped me in sport because they had an understanding of what you were going through. — Sebastian Coe

My overwhelming concern will always be the well-being of the athletes. In Olympic sport, it is rare for competitors not to devote half their young life to this. Their families will have given up all sorts of things to allow them to do that. — Sebastian Coe

We have to recognise there are very few countries you will take the Games to where somebody doesn't have issues on foreign or domestic policy. — Sebastian Coe

Before writing, I start with a series of questions, specific things I need to know before I can write the book ... That list grows and changes as I do more and more research. But when I've answered the bulk of the questions, I begin to write ... — David B. Coe

I'm one of those unlucky people who had a happy childhood. — Jonathan Coe

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

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 nine inches right here; set it straight and you can beat anybody in the world. — Sebastian Coe

Getting the Games for London has been the fulfilment of a dream. It is one which I truly believe can change the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people for the better. But in the end, nothing can quite compare with winning your first Olympic gold medal. — Sebastian Coe

Would you like to see where I will build your house, m'lady?"
She grinned. "You mean our house?"
He mirrored her smile. "Aye."
Taking her hand, he led her along the path to the mouth of the River Coe. They stood on a curved peninsula high above the river where it would be free from floods. Hugh spread his arms wide and looked across Loch Leven. "The hills of Glencoe will be our backdrop, the river of the Coe will be our music, and our galleys will sail through the water of the Leven to Loch Linnhe and out to sea. Mark me, my love, Clan Iain Abrach will rebuild, and will once again rule these lands."
He looked into her eyes and saw joy there. "And you will be my queen. — Amy Jarecki

At university level, I had an economics lecturer who used to joke that I was the only student who handed in essays on British Airways notepaper. — Sebastian Coe

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

I've never sent an email in my life. My kids laugh. I often hand the phone to them and say, 'Can you text this message to somebody.' I don't even have a computer on my desk. — Sebastian Coe

In teaching writing, I'm learning new things about writing. — David B. Coe

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't. — Jonathan Coe

I wouldn't have raced a horse. But you'll then throw back at me that Jesse Owens raced against a horse, and he's one of my heroes, so I'm not going to say it was a silly stunt. I know too much about horses. They're highly unreliable, and they've got brains the size of golf balls. — Sebastian Coe

Half an hour later, as I was deeply immersed in the story of The Man of the Hill, that curious, lengthy digression which seems to have nothing to do with the main narrative but is in fact its cornerstone.. — Jonathan Coe

We need to be confident. We need not to blink. — Sebastian Coe

Jesus can heal anything, anywhere, anytime, and anybody. All you have to do is put your faith in Him. — Jack Coe

World records are only borrowed. — Sebastian Coe

One thing is certain, You can't shake hands with a fist. — David Allan Coe

Anybody who goes searching can find enough artistic things I've done that nobody can ever say I sold out. — David Allan Coe

The nights were advantageous, too. After they kissed their families goodnight, it was expected that they would share a bed, their bodies close, their movements obscured under the covers. — Alexis Coe

The closer you can get to your setting and to primary sources, the more authentic your history is going to be ... — David B. Coe

Blink and you miss a sprint. The 10,000 meters is lap after lap of waiting. Theatrically, the mile is just the right length: beginning, middle, end, a story unfolding. — Sebastian Coe

He was the proud owner of a quite colossal member, which on the many awestruck occasions it had been exposed to public view had been compared variously to a giant frankfurter, an overfed python, a length of led piping, the trunk of a rogue elephant, a barrage balloon, an airport-sized Toblerone and a roll of wet wallpaper. — Jonathan Coe

If you've got just a little bit of faith as a grain of mustard seed, and begin to praise God - that faith will mount up, until fear won't be able to stay in your heart. — Jack Coe

Sacrifice is going to war for your country. Sacrifice is a brave young man being blown up by a landmine in Afghanistan. — Sebastian Coe

Live life as it was meant to be lived. Half asleep, preferably.

[...]

She preferred [...] to go to sleep at once, sleep now being one of the very few aspects of existence for which she felt any degree of enthusiasm [...] — Jonathan Coe

There's a difference between hurting when you lose and being a bad loser. You don't compete at the highest level of sport to feel comfortable about losing, but you behave in a civil way when it goes wrong because that is the flip side. — Sebastian Coe

I wouldn't swap the era I competed in for anything, not a day of it. I started out as an amateur, and people like myself, Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Tessa Sanderson and the rest did it for the glory of winning medals for our country. — Daley Thompson

It was possible to love life, without loving your life. — Christopher Coe

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. — Jonathan Coe

Well, there'll be an outcry, of course, but then it'll die down and something else will come along for people to get annoyed about. The important thing is that we save ourselves a lot of money, and meanwhile a whole generation of children from working-class or low-income families will be eating nothing but crisps and chocolate every day. Which means, in the end, that they'll grow up physically weaker and mentally slower.' Dorothy raised an eyebrow at this assertion. 'Oh, yes,' he assured her. 'A diet high in sugars lead to retarded brain growth. Our chaps have proved it.' He smiled. 'As every general knows, the secret of winning any war is to demoralize the enemy'. — Jonathan Coe

If you have worry, you don't have faith, and if you have faith, you don't have worry. — Jack Coe

I still run every other day. Longer at weekends. I probably do 35 miles a week. — Sebastian 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. — Jonathan Coe

I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me, it is like a mythical place. — Kazuo Ishiguro

My long hair just can't cover up my redneck. — David Allan Coe

Yes - I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm sure I could repeat them perfectly. — Jonathan Coe

You're right, Margaret, absolutely right. Things have changed a lot, even since I've been here. It's a different place now. Better in some ways, worse in others."
"Better!" she echoed, scornfully. — Jonathan Coe

It seems to me that you would have to write a novel on a very small, intimate scale for it not to become political. — Jonathan Coe

All men are created equal, it is only men themselves who place themselves above equality.
— David Allan Coe

If there was one kind of hat Terry despised above all others, it was the baseball cap. There was nothing wrong with children wearing it, of course, but whenever he saw it on the head of an adult it seemed to symbolize everything that he most hated about America, even more potently than the figure of Mickey Mouse or the latest Coke adverts or the hordes of giant yellow 'M's which were even now beginning to advance across Britain like an unchecked virus. And even worse, Kingsley was wearing it back to front. This, without doubt, was the ultimate badge of imbecility. — Jonathan Coe

I don't think I am a workaholic. I prefer to keep busy. It is better than the alternative. — Sebastian Coe