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She [Marilyn Monroe] was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.

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
Midgets
Abstracted
Midget
Monroe
Marilyn
Short
Reason
Good

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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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Whoever called snooker chess with balls was rude, but right.
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Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.
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I'm certainly not a linguist. I learned what languages I could learn in order to read books and I can't really speak them. I couldn't have stayed out of jail in most of them.
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The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.
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Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
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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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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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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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Ban poetry. And make sure that anyone caught reading it is expelled from school. Then it will acquire the glamour.
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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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When I was young I never believed that Australia was anything else except blessed. I thought it was a little dull when I was young, but that was 'cause I was a snob.
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A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.
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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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Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
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Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.
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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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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.
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The great thing about living until you get a bit older if you are a writer, and especially a poet, is that you have more life to reflect on. And I think that if I am better now - and I think that I am probably better than I was - is because that I simply have more to think about, more to get under control, more to understand.
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All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.
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