Quote

His pear-shaped head, I could now see, was situated on top of a pear-shaped body, which his black gown caused to resemble a piece of fruit going to a funeral.

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
Classic
Situated
Fruit
Pears
Piece
Gown
Pieces
Gowns
Head
Resemble
Black
Shaped
Body
Funeral
Going
Caused
Pear

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Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.
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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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Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
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A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.
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I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better.
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Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.
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Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.
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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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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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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
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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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The thing about making a documentary in Las Vegas is there isn't much to film apart from other people making documentaries about Las Vegas.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a brown condom full of walnuts.
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Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it could be sustained by unmemorable ones, provided that the texture of the accumulated jottings avoided the sound of failed poetry.
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It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
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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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The key to effective teaching is to remember how you learned.
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Whoever called snooker chess with balls was rude, but right.
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Snooker is just chess with balls.
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I won't have to miss smoking any more. Nobody smokes where I'm going: It's like a row of restaurants in California.
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