Quote

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.

Clive James

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Much
Good
People
Anyways
Stopped
Ahead
Poetry

More quotes by Clive James

Image
Jimmy Connors likes the ball to come at him in a straight line, so that he can hit it back in another straight line. When it comes to him in a curve, he uses up half of his energy straightening it up again.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
Clive James
Image
A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.
Clive James
Image
On the correctly formed pubescent girl, a Speedo looked wonderful. When it was wet, it was an incitement to riot.
Clive James
Image
Ban poetry. And make sure that anyone caught reading it is expelled from school. Then it will acquire the glamour.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
Clive James
Image
Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
Clive James
Image
Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.
Clive James
Image
Disco dancing is just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.
Clive James