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If we want a book to do more than what it does, that's a condemnation. If we want it to do more of what it does, that's an endorsement.
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
Book
Endorsement
Endorsements
Condemnation
Language
Doe
More quotes by Clive James
The streets, at least in this part of town, seemed impossibly clean in comparison to London. The public telephones were unvandalised. For a London telephone booth to look like that it would have to be guarded around the clock by the SAS.
Clive James
Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.
Clive James
Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film.
Clive James
My wife and I just started listening to the late Beethoven Quartets together, an activity I recommend for all married couples, but that doesn't really mean that I'm finished reading.
Clive James
On the correctly formed pubescent girl, a Speedo looked wonderful. When it was wet, it was an incitement to riot.
Clive James
The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.
Clive James
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
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.
Clive James
A loose horse is any horse sensible enough to get rid of its rider at an early stage and carry on unencumbered.
Clive James
Reading and writing... are exciting. The most exciting things I can think of. And now, as I reflect... I have to say that I've been lucky in that I'm amused by what I do - sufficiently amused.
Clive James
Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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
Ban poetry. And make sure that anyone caught reading it is expelled from school. Then it will acquire the glamour.
Clive James
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
The great thing about living until you get a bit older if you are a writer, and especially a poet, is that you have more life to reflect on. And I think that if I am better now - and I think that I am probably better than I was - is because that I simply have more to think about, more to get under control, more to understand.
Clive James
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.
Clive James
Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a brown condom full of walnuts.
Clive James
Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
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
Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.
Clive James