Jonathan Coe Quotes

The most important thing I learned as a foreign correspondent in about 80 countries is that it takes a very shallow knowledge of history to think that there are solutions to most problems.

The music wasn't going to happen, and I realized I had read so little. I didn't know my way around any century. I was very under read.

We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.

I am not much of a researcher as a novelist; I write mainly from experience.

I wish I wrote more about the world at more distance from myself.

I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented.

I spent a little time in Germany as a schoolboy learning German, and it's a country I knew very well, spent a lot of time in. I knew the history very well. I've always wanted to do a piece of work about the post-war period, of one sort or another.

The kids think we're wacky. Mum and Dad are in showbiz - they don't know any other way. They've grown up travelling all over the world and are getting a worldly education. My son is 12 and he can speak eloquently on religions and cultures.

I usually make sure that my stories are from Africa or my own background so as to highlight the cultural background at the same time as telling the story.

The study of history is in the truest sense an education, and a training for political life.

We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.

We are raising students in America who are, by and large, historically illiterate.

Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion; Molière becomes a contemporary of Napoleon, Voltaire, a contemporary of Lenin.

Without understanding your history, you can't get a perspective about the present.

I think a sense of history and perspective for our young people today is essential.

According to the law of custom, and perhaps of reason, foreign travel completes the education of an English gentleman.

I'm just writing what I know. I've never been much of a reader of fantasy, and I think you write what you, personally, enjoy reading.

I'm not an educated man. I only know what I'm told, and I'm not told that much; I have no frame of reference for how to place things in history be a responsible leader. All I can do is be an artist.

Inspiration thing is important, to teach the kids that JFK is not an airport, RFK's not a stadium, Martin Luther King ain't a street

Surely knowledge of the natural world, knowledge of the human condition, knowledge of the nature and dynamics of society, knowledge of the past so that one may use it in experiencing the present and aspiring to the future--all of these, it would seem reasonable to suppose, are essential to an educated man. To these must be added another--knowledge of the products of our artistic heritage that mark the history of our esthetic wonder and delight.

Broad, wholesome, charitable views .. can not be acquired by vegetating in one's little corner of the earth.

Reading and writing, arithmetic and grammar do not constitute education, any more than a knife, fork and spoon constitute a dinner.

Learning history is easy; learning its lessons seems almost impossibly difficult.

That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.

I'm not of the religion but I'm educated enough to understand there is a misconception about it globally.