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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

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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
Really
Couple
Quartets
Listening
Beethoven
Started
Couples
Wife
Recommend
Reading
Finished
Doesn
Activity
Together
Married
Mean
Late

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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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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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Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a brown condom full of walnuts.
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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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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.
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First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.
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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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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.
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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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Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing.
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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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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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On the correctly formed pubescent girl, a Speedo looked wonderful. When it was wet, it was an incitement to riot.
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Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film.
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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.
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Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.
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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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It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
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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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