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I try to be specific. One thought at a time. Clear. Articulate. And above all, memorable, if you can be. You'd like to write phrases that people can't forget as soon as they read them.

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
Writing
Phrases
Trying
Specific
Soon
Time
Clear
Like
Forget
People
Read
Write
Articulate
Thought
Memorable

More quotes by Clive James

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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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John McEnroe has hair like badly turned broccoli.
Clive James
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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.
Clive James
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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.
Clive James
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Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.
Clive James
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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
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You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.
Clive James
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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.
Clive James
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It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
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.
Clive James
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Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it could be sustained by unmemorable ones, provided that the texture of the accumulated jottings avoided the sound of failed poetry.
Clive James
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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
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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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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
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Dinner was meat - not hunks of meat, as in Australia, but pathetic scraps of meat, as in Britain - which the girls upstairs transformed into edible dishes by heating it in secret ways and adding bits of stuff to it.
Clive James
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An education without a Bible education is no education.
Clive James
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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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A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds.
Clive James
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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.
Clive James
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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.
Clive James