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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.

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
Language
European
Cambridge
Way
Standard
Spanish
Good
Findings
Laboratory
Finding
Grammar
Standards
Languages
Later
Vocabulary
Learned
Added
Read
German

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Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a brown condom full of walnuts.
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You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.
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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.
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An education without a Bible education is no education.
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I was a big pothead for a short period. That was what ticked me off that I shouldn't go near hard drugs, actually, because I would consume the stuff as if it was going out of style and it rapidly occurred to me that if I ever tried a hard drug, the same thing would happen, so I never did.
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It is a good rule in life to be wary of the company of people who think of themselves in the third person, no matter how well justified they might seem to be in doing so.
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Perhaps I should have pointed out more often that without her (mother's) guidance and example I might have gone straight from short pants to Long Bay Gaol, which in those days was still in use and heavily populated by larcenous young men who had chosen their parents less wisely.
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His pear-shaped head, I could now see, was situated on top of a pear-shaped body, which his black gown caused to resemble a piece of fruit going to a funeral.
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John McEnroe has hair like badly turned broccoli.
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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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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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Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
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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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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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Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire.
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She [Marilyn Monroe] was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.
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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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The Benson and Hedges Cup was won by McEnroe ... he was as charming as always, which means that he was as charming as a dead mouse in a loaf of bread.
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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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The Canadian version of Julius Caesar's memoirs? I came, I saw, I coped.
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