Quote

Murray sounds like a blindfolded man riding a unicycle on the rim of the pit of doom, the men actually facing the danger are all so taciturn that you might as well try interviewing the cars themselves.

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
Might
Cars
Murray
Well
Classic
Blindfolded
Trying
Sounds
Interviewing
Men
Car
Rims
Like
Danger
Pits
Actually
Doom
Sound
Facing
Wells
Riding
Taciturn

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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.
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It is a good rule in life to be wary of the company of people who think of themselves in the third person, no matter how well justified they might seem to be in doing so.
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Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen.
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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.
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I love reading about the sea. I love reading about it a lot more than actually being on the sea, when you think about it.
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A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.
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Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.
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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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Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.
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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.
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John McEnroe has hair like badly turned broccoli.
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Experts say men think of sex every 10 seconds... What do they think of in the other nine?
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Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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I actually didn't like that feeling of being out of touch because what I do depends on being in touch. But it's fun to talk about. That's one of the real dangers of drugs: they're too much fun to talk about.
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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.
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Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film.
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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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Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.
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John McEnroe looks as if he is serving round the edge of an imaginary building.
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