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Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.

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
Quiet
Fire
Murray
Sound
Walker
Moments
Walkers
Even
Trousers
Men
Tranquility
Like
Sounds
Whose

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Here was my first lesson on the resolutely maintained untidiness and ill-health of the English upper orders. In baggy evening dress and old before their time, they displayed gapped and tangled teeth in loosely open mouths. Gently shedding dandruff, they lurched across the lawn. When they stood at the bar they looked like Lee Trevino Putting.
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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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I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better.
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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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John McEnroe looks as if he is serving round the edge of an imaginary building.
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Being young is wonderful. But one of the secrets of being a human individual - a mature human individual shall we put it rather grandly - is that you can see this desire in perspective.
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People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.
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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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An education without a Bible education is no education.
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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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Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.
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On the correctly formed pubescent girl, a Speedo looked wonderful. When it was wet, it was an incitement to riot.
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Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
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Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.
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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.
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Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it could be sustained by unmemorable ones, provided that the texture of the accumulated jottings avoided the sound of failed poetry.
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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.
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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.
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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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The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.
Clive James