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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.
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
Loaf
Means
Mouse
Mean
Mice
Always
Charming
Cups
Benson
Tennis
Mcenroe
Bread
Hedges
Dead
More quotes by Clive James
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.
Clive James
I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
Clive James
Disco dancing is just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail.
Clive James
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
Clive James
Like most people who smoked umpteen cigarettes a day, I tasted only the first one. The succeeding umpteen minus one were a compulsive ritual which had no greater savour than the fumes of burning money.
Clive James
Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
Clive James
Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
Clive James
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
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.
Clive James
I'm certainly not a linguist. I learned what languages I could learn in order to read books and I can't really speak them. I couldn't have stayed out of jail in most of them.
Clive James
The key to effective teaching is to remember how you learned.
Clive James
Experts say men think of sex every 10 seconds... What do they think of in the other nine?
Clive James
Bjorn Borg looks like a hunchbacked, jut-bottomed version of Lizabeth Scott, impersonating a bearded Apache princess.
Clive James
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
Sometimes I feel if I was young again, I would wrap a bandana around my head like Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and I would become a pirate of the Web. And I would go around stealing poems and assembling into one spot like a treasure cave.
Clive James
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
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
I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better.
Clive James
Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.
Clive James
On the correctly formed pubescent girl, a Speedo looked wonderful. When it was wet, it was an incitement to riot.
Clive James