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Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
Clive James
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Clive James
Age: 80 †
Born: 1939
Born: October 7
Died: 2019
Died: November 24
Author
Broadcaster
Literary Critic
Poet
Television Presenter
Writer
Kogarah
New South Wales
Australia
Clive Vivian Leopold James
Clive Vivian James
Simultaneously
Powerless
Television
Often
Change
World
People
Worsening
Blamed
More quotes by Clive James
Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
Clive James
Bjorn Borg looks like a hunchbacked, jut-bottomed version of Lizabeth Scott, impersonating a bearded Apache princess.
Clive James
Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
Clive James
Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.
Clive James
The Benson and Hedges Cup was won by McEnroe ... he was as charming as always, which means that he was as charming as a dead mouse in a loaf of bread.
Clive James
I'm certainly not a linguist. I learned what languages I could learn in order to read books and I can't really speak them. I couldn't have stayed out of jail in most of them.
Clive James
I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
Clive James
First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.
Clive James
A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.
Clive James
It is almost better to be an impulse shirt-buyer than an impulse shoe-buyer. I have worn shirts that made people think I was a retired Mafia hit-man or a Yugoslavian sports convener from Split, but I have worn shoes that made people think I was insane.
Clive James
I saw the film Pearl Harbour and it made me wish that the Japanese had bombed Hollywood instead!
Clive James
A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds.
Clive James
If an artist is any good at all, then he or she will have a later phase that's more interesting than the early one.
Clive James
Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.
Clive James
The thing about making a documentary in Las Vegas is there isn't much to film apart from other people making documentaries about Las Vegas.
Clive James
I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates... Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.
Clive James
Nationwide featured an amazing collection of apprentice impersonators. From all over Britain, schoolchildren materialised via local studios to give us their imitations of the mighty. There were at least three uncannily accurate Margaret Thatchers, their eyelids fatigued with condescension and their voices swooping and whining like dive-bombers
Clive James
Whoever called snooker chess with balls was rude, but right.
Clive James
It is a good rule in life to be wary of the company of people who think of themselves in the third person, no matter how well justified they might seem to be in doing so.
Clive James
Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.
Clive James