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

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I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
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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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Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
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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.
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It is almost better to be an impulse shirt-buyer than an impulse shoe-buyer. I have worn shirts that made people think I was a retired Mafia hit-man or a Yugoslavian sports convener from Split, but I have worn shoes that made people think I was insane.
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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 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.
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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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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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The Canadian version of Julius Caesar's memoirs? I came, I saw, I coped.
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Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.
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Ban poetry. And make sure that anyone caught reading it is expelled from school. Then it will acquire the glamour.
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Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.
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All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.
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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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Whoever called snooker chess with balls was rude, but right.
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Visitors who come from the Soviet Union and tell you how marvelous it is to be able to look at public buildings without advertisements stuck all over them are just telling you that they can't decipher the cyrillic alphabet.
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Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
Clive James
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Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a brown condom full of walnuts.
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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.
Clive James