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Among artists without talent Marxism will always be popular, since it enables them to blame society for the fact that nobody wants to hear what they have to say.

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
Society
Blame
Fact
Artists
Artist
Among
Facts
Nobody
Without
Talent
Marxism
Always
Wants
Enables
Hear
Classic
Since
Popular

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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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All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.
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The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivations.
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The Canadian version of Julius Caesar's memoirs? I came, I saw, I coped.
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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
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It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
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I saw the film Pearl Harbour and it made me wish that the Japanese had bombed Hollywood instead!
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The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.
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John McEnroe looks as if he is serving round the edge of an imaginary building.
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Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
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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
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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.
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Jimmy Connors likes the ball to come at him in a straight line, so that he can hit it back in another straight line. When it comes to him in a curve, he uses up half of his energy straightening it up again.
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A loose horse is any horse sensible enough to get rid of its rider at an early stage and carry on unencumbered.
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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.
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Perhaps I should have pointed out more often that without her (mother's) guidance and example I might have gone straight from short pants to Long Bay Gaol, which in those days was still in use and heavily populated by larcenous young men who had chosen their parents less wisely.
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