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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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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
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More quotes by Clive James
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
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
The streets, at least in this part of town, seemed impossibly clean in comparison to London. The public telephones were unvandalised. For a London telephone booth to look like that it would have to be guarded around the clock by the SAS.
Clive James
Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
Clive James
All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.
Clive James
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.
Clive James
When I was very young, one of my favourite books was Captain's Courageous and I suppose one of the reasons I loved it, it was a life I knew I should have had, learning all the different bits of the ship and learning to catch fish and rig sails and to -all the things that I never learned and I never learned the discipline, but I hungered after it.
Clive James
Snooker is just chess with balls.
Clive James
I love reading about the sea. I love reading about it a lot more than actually being on the sea, when you think about it.
Clive James
I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better.
Clive James
I taught myself Russian, which was very, very useful, especially for poetry and in fact if you can't read Pushkin in Russian, you're really missing something.
Clive James
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
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
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
Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen.
Clive James
I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
Clive James
Whoever called snooker chess with balls was rude, but right.
Clive James
John McEnroe looks as if he is serving round the edge of an imaginary building.
Clive James
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
Clive James
A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.
Clive James