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Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.

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
Star
Washing
Played
Writes
Stars
Backwards
Sound
Theme
War
Wars
Music
Machine
Writing
Sounds
Like
Machines
Humphrey

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Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.
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You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty.
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Disco dancing is just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail.
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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.
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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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Spending all my remaining money on a ticket to Florence was rendered needlessly complicated by the fact that none of the ticket-sellers had ever heard of the place. At last their supervisor showed up and set them straight by informing them that the city they had always referred to as 'Firenze' was in reality called Florence.
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Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.
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The Language Laboratory at Cambridge is a very good way of finding out about grammar and the vocabulary and that's why I learned to read German and later on I added Spanish, the standard European languages.
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Whoever called snooker chess with balls was rude, but right.
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Nationwide featured an amazing collection of apprentice impersonators. From all over Britain, schoolchildren materialised via local studios to give us their imitations of the mighty. There were at least three uncannily accurate Margaret Thatchers, their eyelids fatigued with condescension and their voices swooping and whining like dive-bombers
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On the correctly formed pubescent girl, a Speedo looked wonderful. When it was wet, it was an incitement to riot.
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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.
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Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.
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Among artists without talent Marxism will always be popular, since it enables them to blame society for the fact that nobody wants to hear what they have to say.
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Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
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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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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.
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