Quote

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

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
Cups
Tennis
Benson
Bread
Mcenroe
Dead
Hedges
Means
Loaf
Mean
Mouse
Always
Mice
Charming

More quotes by Clive James

Image
First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.
Clive James
Image
The smartest move I ever made in showbusiness was to start off looking like the kind of wreck I would end up as. I was already aged in the wood.
Clive James
Image
Bjorn Borg looks like a hunchbacked, jut-bottomed version of Lizabeth Scott, impersonating a bearded Apache princess.
Clive James
Image
Snooker is just chess with balls.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
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.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
Clive James
Image
Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
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
Image
You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty.
Clive James
Image
Experts say men think of sex every 10 seconds... What do they think of in the other nine?
Clive James
Image
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.
Clive James
Image
The key to effective teaching is to remember how you learned.
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
All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.
Clive James
Image
Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.
Clive James
Image
My niece is - her name is Sasha, is currently learning Russian at Melbourne University and I look forward to the day when I can talk to her about Pushkin.
Clive James