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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
Reading
Expelled
School
Bans
Make
Glamour
Acquire
Caught
Poetry
Anyone
Sure

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I love reading about the sea. I love reading about it a lot more than actually being on the sea, when you think about it.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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Disco dancing is just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail.
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Being young is wonderful. But one of the secrets of being a human individual - a mature human individual shall we put it rather grandly - is that you can see this desire in perspective.
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Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.
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The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.
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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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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.
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You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.
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Like most people who smoked umpteen cigarettes a day, I tasted only the first one. The succeeding umpteen minus one were a compulsive ritual which had no greater savour than the fumes of burning money.
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John McEnroe has hair like badly turned broccoli.
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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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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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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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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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Bjorn Borg looks like a hunchbacked, jut-bottomed version of Lizabeth Scott, impersonating a bearded Apache princess.
Clive James