Quote

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

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
Abstracted
Midget
Monroe
Marilyn
Short
Reason
Good
Midgets

More quotes by 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
Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.
Clive James
Image
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.
Clive James
Image
The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.
Clive James
Image
A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.
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
You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.
Clive James
Image
Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
A loose horse is any horse sensible enough to get rid of its rider at an early stage and carry on unencumbered.
Clive James
Image
Young men especially - I don't know if young women feel much the same - but young men think they are immortal, automatically. They have no idea of time because they have so much energy and I was like that.
Clive James
Image
The key to effective teaching is to remember how you learned.
Clive James
Image
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
Image
An education without a Bible education is no education.
Clive James
Image
John McEnroe looks as if he is serving round the edge of an imaginary building.
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
On the correctly formed pubescent girl, a Speedo looked wonderful. When it was wet, it was an incitement to riot.
Clive James
Image
The thing about making a documentary in Las Vegas is there isn't much to film apart from other people making documentaries about Las Vegas.
Clive James
Image
I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
Clive James
Image
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