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The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.

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
Foresight
Hindsight
Inevitable
Effect
Subject
Subjects
Biographer
Effects
Biographers
Belittle

More quotes by Clive James

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You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty.
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Young men especially - I don't know if young women feel much the same - but young men think they are immortal, automatically. They have no idea of time because they have so much energy and I was like that.
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It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
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His pear-shaped head, I could now see, was situated on top of a pear-shaped body, which his black gown caused to resemble a piece of fruit going to a funeral.
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Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.
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I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better.
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Snooker is just chess with balls.
Clive James
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Dinner was meat - not hunks of meat, as in Australia, but pathetic scraps of meat, as in Britain - which the girls upstairs transformed into edible dishes by heating it in secret ways and adding bits of stuff to it.
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All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.
Clive James
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Spending all my remaining money on a ticket to Florence was rendered needlessly complicated by the fact that none of the ticket-sellers had ever heard of the place. At last their supervisor showed up and set them straight by informing them that the city they had always referred to as 'Firenze' was in reality called Florence.
Clive James
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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
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Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.
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The key to effective teaching is to remember how you learned.
Clive James
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You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.
Clive James
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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.
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Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
Clive James
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I saw the film Pearl Harbour and it made me wish that the Japanese had bombed Hollywood instead!
Clive James
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Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen.
Clive James
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I won't have to miss smoking any more. Nobody smokes where I'm going: It's like a row of restaurants in California.
Clive James
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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