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

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Whoever called snooker chess with balls was rude, but right.
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An education without a Bible education is no education.
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First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.
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A luxury liner is really just a bad play surrounded by water.
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If an artist is any good at all, then he or she will have a later phase that's more interesting than the early one.
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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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Like a Volvo, Bjorn Borg is rugged, has good after-sales service, and is very dull.
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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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Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen.
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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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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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The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.
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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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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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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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She [Marilyn Monroe] was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.
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My niece is - her name is Sasha, is currently learning Russian at Melbourne University and I look forward to the day when I can talk to her about Pushkin.
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Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits.
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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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Reading and writing... are exciting. The most exciting things I can think of. And now, as I reflect... I have to say that I've been lucky in that I'm amused by what I do - sufficiently amused.
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