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Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.

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
Performance
Performances
Writer
Aligned
Art
Performer
Writing
Closely
Performers
Performing

More quotes by Clive James

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You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty.
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Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
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An education without a Bible education is no education.
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The Language Laboratory at Cambridge is a very good way of finding out about grammar and the vocabulary and that's why I learned to read German and later on I added Spanish, the standard European languages.
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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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She [Marilyn Monroe] was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.
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Bjorn Borg looks like a hunchbacked, jut-bottomed version of Lizabeth Scott, impersonating a bearded Apache princess.
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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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John McEnroe looks as if he is serving round the edge of an imaginary building.
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Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
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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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On the correctly formed pubescent girl, a Speedo looked wonderful. When it was wet, it was an incitement to riot.
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Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
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The key to effective teaching is to remember how you learned.
Clive James
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All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.
Clive James
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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
Clive James
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Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.
Clive James
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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.
Clive James
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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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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.
Clive James