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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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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
Poetry
Anyone
Sure
Reading
Expelled
School
Bans
Make
Glamour
Acquire
Caught

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Spending all my remaining money on a ticket to Florence was rendered needlessly complicated by the fact that none of the ticket-sellers had ever heard of the place. At last their supervisor showed up and set them straight by informing them that the city they had always referred to as 'Firenze' was in reality called Florence.
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Experts say men think of sex every 10 seconds... What do they think of in the other nine?
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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 saw the film Pearl Harbour and it made me wish that the Japanese had bombed Hollywood instead!
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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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A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds.
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If an artist is any good at all, then he or she will have a later phase that's more interesting than the early one.
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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.
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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.
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All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.
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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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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 Canadian version of Julius Caesar's memoirs? I came, I saw, I coped.
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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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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.
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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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Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
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Disco dancing is just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail.
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Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen.
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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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