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In recent years, perhaps encouraged by competition from McDonald's, the British hamburger has become a credit to the nation. At the time of which I speak, it looked like a scorched beer-coaster or a tenderized disc brake.

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
Nation
Recent
Hamburger
Perhaps
Beer
Discs
Nations
Humorous
Coaster
Funny
Credit
Coasters
Speak
British
Mcdonald
Become
Competition
Brake
Years
England
Hamburgers
Scorched
Time
Looked
Encouraged
Disc

More quotes by Clive James

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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.
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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.
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Disco dancing is just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail.
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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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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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Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.
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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.
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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.
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John McEnroe looks as if he is serving round the edge of an imaginary building.
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A loose horse is any horse sensible enough to get rid of its rider at an early stage and carry on unencumbered.
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It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
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John McEnroe has hair like badly turned broccoli.
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All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.
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Perhaps I should have pointed out more often that without her (mother's) guidance and example I might have gone straight from short pants to Long Bay Gaol, which in those days was still in use and heavily populated by larcenous young men who had chosen their parents less wisely.
Clive James
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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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Ban poetry. And make sure that anyone caught reading it is expelled from school. Then it will acquire the glamour.
Clive James
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Snooker is just chess with balls.
Clive James
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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
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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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The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivations.
Clive James