Coe Quotes

Interviewing Hugh McIlvanney, I got to read lots of his stuff again. I'm a big fan of his writing. ~ Sebastian Coe

Competing is exciting and winning is exhilarating, but the true prize will always be the self-knowledge and understanding that you have gained along the way. ~ Sebastian Coe

Now I lay me down to cheat on the woman I love so, and if I die between these sheets I pray to God she'll never know. ~ David Allan Coe

Freedom cannot be given ... It can only be taken away. ~ David Allan Coe

I like the idea of a big caesura between the narratives, a space which readers can fill in with their own speculative history. ~ Jonathan Coe

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

You didn't take part, Benjamin?" Gunther asked, as he passed me a plate of cheese and cold meat.
"My brother doesn't play games," said Paul. "He's an aesthete. He sat by the window all afternoon with a funny look on his face: probably composing a tone poem. ~ Jonathan Coe

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

I live a perfectly happy and comfortable life in Blair's Britain, but I can't work up much affection for the culture we've created for ourselves: it's too cynical, too knowing, too ironic, too empty of real value and meaning. ~ Jonathan Coe

Coe has smashed the world record, 1:44.92 seconds has never been run easier ~ Ron Pickering

This is not going to be business as usual. This is business unusual ~ Sebastian Coe

Hey - Duggie! Duggie! Duggie!" He came running up to me, sparkler in hand. I felt like sticking one on him, the cheeky bastard. Nobody called me Duggie.
He held the sparkler up in front of my face and said, "Wait. Wait."
I was already waiting. What else was there to do?
"Here you are," he said. "Look! What's this?"
At that precise moment, his sparkler fizzled out. I didn't say anything, so he supplied the answer himself. "The death of the socialist dream," he said.
He giggled like a little maniac, and stared at me for a second or two before running off, and in that time I saw exactly the same thing I'd seen in Stubbs's eyes the day before. The same triumphalism, the same excitement, not because something new was being created, but because something was being destroyed. I thought about Phillip and his stupid rock symphony and I swear that my eyes pricked with tears. This ludicrous attempt to squeeze the history of the countless millennia into half an hour's worth of crappy riffs and chord changes suddenly seemed no more Quixotic than all the things my dad and his colleagues had been working towards for so long. A national health service, free to everyone who needed it. Redistribution of wealth through taxation. Equality of opportunity. Beautiful ideas, Dad, noble aspirations, just as there was the kernel of something beautiful in Philip's musical hodge-podge. But it was never going to happen. If there had ever been a time when it might have happened, t ~ Jonathan 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

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

Well, I thought you might want to listen to this. I mean, I thought you might be . . . ready for it.
"I don't know if you remember, but just before . . . just before Malcolm died, he took me to see a concert in the town. We went to Barbarella's, and we heard all these weird bands. You remember the kind of music he used to like? Well, the people who made this record were playing that night, and they were his favourite. He liked them more than anyone. And I thought that if you heard it, it might remind you . . . might help you to think a bit about the kind of person he was.
"And there's another reason too. You see the title of the record? It's called The Rotters' Club.
"The Rotters' Club: that's us, Lois, isn't it? Do you see? That's what they used to call us, at school. Bent Rotter, and Lowest Rotter. We're The Rotters' Club. You and me. Not Paul. Just you and me.
"I think this record was meant for us, you see. Malcolm never got to hear it, but I think he . . . knows about it, if that doesn't sound too silly. And now it's his gift, to you and me. From - wherever he is.
"I don't know if that makes any sense.
"Anyway.
"I'll just leave it on the table here.
"Have a listen, if you feel like it.
"I've got to go now.
"I've got to go, Lois.
"I've got to go. ~ Jonathan Coe

I joined the local athletics club when I was 12, that's what I did. I did it of my own volition. ~ Sebastian Coe

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

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

Alexis Coe rescues a buried but extraordinarily telling episode from the 1890s that resonates in all sorts of ways with today. That in itself would be an accomplishment. But this is a book that is truly riveting, a narrative that gallops. Lizzy Borden eat your heart out. Here's a real crime of passion. Or was it? I dare you to pick this one up and try, just try to put it down. ~ Peter Orner

Charlie Parker was a genius, as was Lester Young. ~ Sebastian Coe

These days, every politician is a laughing-stock, and the laughter which occasionally used to illuminate the dark corners of the political world with dazzling, unexpected shafts of hilarity has become an unthinking reflex on our part, a tired Pavlovian reaction to situations that are too difficult or too depressing to think about clearly. ~ Jonathan Coe

As soon as you start writing about how human beings interact with each other socially, you're into politics, aren't you? ~ Jonathan Coe

Revisionist historians are about to get their hands on the Thatcher years, shes probably going to be looked at again because she feels far enough away now, and we dont see her much on the political landscape in this country, shes kind of disappeared and she doesnt speak out much anymore. ~ Jonathan Coe

As I write, invariably I encounter more questions and answer those as I go. ~ David B. Coe

It is to create the best Games the world has ever seen by unlocking the UK's unrivalled passion for sport, by delivering the best Games for athletes to compete in, by showcasing London's unmatched cultural wealth and diversity and by creating a real and lasting legacy. ~ Sebastian Coe

The biggest fragility in a project is often just the inability to be able to explain to people why you are doing it, and when you're going to do it, and what's going to happen. ~ Sebastian Coe

The heart was made to give love; once the heart is satisfied, life just doesn't seem so bad anymore. ~ Mike 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

I've never wanted anybody to like me because I had long hair or short hair, or that they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I dressed or they liked the way I smile. ~ David Allan Coe

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

We need to be confident. We need not to blink. ~ Sebastian 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

Line by line, page by page, you write the chapters of your life... Tomorrow is the beginning of a new chapter--a new scene in your life--with the hope of a good ending. Make every keystroke count. ~ Mike Coe

I know many people who are actually queasy about the idea that their kids may harbour sporting ambitions. ~ Sebastian 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

I can remember the day I decided I would retire from competitive athletics as vividly as if it were yesterday. ~ Sebastian 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

It's only a drawback in the States, where most people seem to have no real interest in other countries and the notion of a novel which might offer insight into life in the UK doesn't seem to appeal very widely. ~ Jonathan Coe

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

I believed that we had to answer the question: Why are we doing this? And it wasn't until we started to articulate, internally as an organisation, that it was about using the Games to inspire young people to participate in sports that we each understood what we had to do. ~ Sebastian 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

During my first Olympics in 1980, at the age of 23, I was physically in great condition but mentally too inexperienced to cope comfortably in the pressure cooker of an Olympic year. ~ Sebastian Coe

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

Since the break-up of the 1990s, Russia has not had winter sports facilities. All the winter sport venues were effectively located in countries that are no longer part of the federation. There is a strong argument for saying Sochi's legacy will be this country will have winter sports facilities it did not have before. ~ 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

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

Steve Ovett, Sebastian Coe, Steve Cram - the vanguard of our cream ~ Ron Pickering

Choice births consequences that will either propel us toward our dreams and goals or spin us out of control. ~ Mike 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

I was mainly in a state of nervousness while I wrote it - nervousness that it was far bigger and more complicated than anything Id attempted before, and that maybe my talent just wasnt up to it and the book would have to be abandoned, or would turn out not to work at all when it was finished. ~ Jonathan Coe

Looks like everybody's asleep. Don't they keep a light on for you?"
"They probably figured I wouldn't be needing it."
"Sorry to disappoint your cousins."
"Not to mention me.I'm gravely disappointed at the way this evening has ended.You're going to ruin my reputation as a lady-killer." He flashed her one of his famous smiles.
He opened the door and climbed down.When he rounded the front of the truck, he paused beside her open window. "Good night,Marilee. I appreciate the ride home. I just wish you didn't have to make that long drive back to town all alone."
"I'll be fine.I've got my radio to keep me company."
"You could always coe inside and bunk in my room."
"What a generous offer.But once again, I'm afraid I'll have to decline,though I have to admit that I've had more fun in a few hours with you than I've had in years."
The minute the words were out of her mouth,she wanted to call them back. What was it about Wyatt that had her trusting him enough to reveal such a thing?
Though she barely knew him,he'd uncovered an inherent goodness in him that was rare and wonderful.
This had been one of the best nights of her life.
Still,he'd gone very quiet.As though digesting her words and searching for hidden meanings.
As he turned away she called boldly, "What? No kiss good night? Just because I refused to spend the night with you?"
He turned back with a smile, but it wasn't his usual silly grin.Instead, she noted,there w ~ R.C. Ryan

My tolerance for crazy people is, I think, high a tolerance as you're ever going to find. I love being around David Allen Coe. I would have loved to hang out with Tiny Tim. I can listen to Sun Ra on a tape-recording rant. ~ Penn Jillette

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

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

The Americans sowed the seed, and now they have reaped the whirlwind ~ Sebastian Coe

But you can try to read books at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons. ~ Jonathan Coe

We still got roaches on the bed, walls, and floors, but Troy ain't even crying 'bout them no more. He probably too used to them by now. ~ Coe Booth

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

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

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

He waited in silence for the blindfold to be tied firmly at the back of his head. 'Right,' said Wilkins, emphatically. 'That should do. How many fingers am I holding up?' 'Three,' said Thomas. 'God damn it to hell, how did you know that? Can you see through the cloth?' 'No. It was a guess.' 'Well you're not supposed to guess. For crying out loud, I'm trying to make sure that you can't see where we're going. We're not here to play guessing games. How many fingers am I holding up?' 'I've no idea. I can't see a bloody thing.' 'Good. It was four, by the way. Not that it matters. Now shut up. ~ Jonathan Coe

The House of Winter - such a happy family are we. - Coe ~ Andrea Cremer

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

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

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

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

The Paralympians have lifted the cloud of limitation. ~ Sebastian Coe

The deepest, most complex part of our soul is satisfied with a simple word of thanks or encouragement--an act of unconditional love. ~ Mike 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

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

I can be a bit impatient sometimes. If I'm really focusing on something, I can expect everybody to move at the same pace, and that's probably not massively endearing. ~ Sebastian Coe

Our success in Singapore was a Herculean effort by the whole team. Now I am determined to deliver on all we promised. I will be watching like a hawk. ~ Sebastian Coe

Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do. ~ 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

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

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

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

Don't you know what a pussy is, sir?'

'Of course he doesn't. He hasn't even seen Basic Instinct. ~ Jonathan Coe

Besh grinned. Only a fool would choose to justify himself by likening his actions to those of a bigger fool. ~ David B. Coe

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

They were written in the early '90s when I was strapped for cash. ~ Jonathan Coe

Your pops is a real playa ~ Coe Booth

If Alice had a post-engagement policy, it was to pass. ~ Alexis Coe

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

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

I gotta say, it feel good coming back home to the projects. Where I belong. ~ Coe Booth

The great thing about athletics is that it's like poker sometimes: you know what's in your hand, and it may be a load of rubbish, but you've got to keep up the front. ~ Sebastian Coe

Football was not what I was put on this planet to do. ~ Sebastian Coe

I will go to my grave believing that participation is best driven by the well-stocked shop window. ~ Sebastian Coe

Ah, well, I have no talent for nonfiction, that's my problem. ~ Jonathan 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

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. ~ 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