Quote

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.

Clive James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Come
Line
Jimmy
Lines
Curves
Half
Uses
Use
Tennis
Energy
Ball
Comes
Straight
Connors
Another
Balls
Straightening
Back
Likes
Curve

More quotes by Clive James

Image
Experts say men think of sex every 10 seconds... What do they think of in the other nine?
Clive James
Image
I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better.
Clive James
Image
Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
Clive James
Image
My wife and I just started listening to the late Beethoven Quartets together, an activity I recommend for all married couples, but that doesn't really mean that I'm finished reading.
Clive James
Image
The Language Laboratory at Cambridge is a very good way of finding out about grammar and the vocabulary and that's why I learned to read German and later on I added Spanish, the standard European languages.
Clive James
Image
The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
I taught myself Russian, which was very, very useful, especially for poetry and in fact if you can't read Pushkin in Russian, you're really missing something.
Clive James
Image
I was a big pothead for a short period. That was what ticked me off that I shouldn't go near hard drugs, actually, because I would consume the stuff as if it was going out of style and it rapidly occurred to me that if I ever tried a hard drug, the same thing would happen, so I never did.
Clive James
Image
When I was young I never believed that Australia was anything else except blessed. I thought it was a little dull when I was young, but that was 'cause I was a snob.
Clive James
Image
Snooker is just chess with balls.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
A loose horse is any horse sensible enough to get rid of its rider at an early stage and carry on unencumbered.
Clive James
Image
She [Marilyn Monroe] was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.
Clive James
Image
Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film.
Clive James
Image
Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.
Clive James
Image
You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.
Clive James
Image
Ban poetry. And make sure that anyone caught reading it is expelled from school. Then it will acquire the glamour.
Clive James
Image
I try to be specific. One thought at a time. Clear. Articulate. And above all, memorable, if you can be. You'd like to write phrases that people can't forget as soon as they read them.
Clive James
Image
If the humanism that makes civilization civilized is to be preserved into the new century, it will need advocates. These advocates will need a memory, and part of that memory will need to be of an age in which they were not yet alive.
Clive James