Clive James Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.

  Clive James

  Art, Writing, Performing

  "'I'm dying, I just look remarkably cheerful' says Clive James". "7.30" with Philip Williams, www.abc.net.au. August 19, 2015.

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• As far as talent goes, Marilyn Monroe was so minimally gifted as to be almost unemployable, and anyone who holds to the opinion that she was a great natural comic identifies himself immediately as a dunce.

  Clive James

  Opinion, Talent, Natural

  Clive James (2009). “Reliable Essays: The Best of Clive James: Reliable Essays:The Best of Clive James”, p.167, Pan Macmillan

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• Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it could be sustained by unmemorable ones, provided that the texture of the accumulated jottings avoided the sound of failed poetry.

  Clive James

  Memorable, Poetry, Sound

  Clive James (2014). “Poetry Notebook: 2006–2014”, p.10, Pan Macmillan

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• The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

  Clive James

  Art, Expression, Long

  Clive James (1983). “Glued to the box: television criticism from the Observer, 1979-82”, Jonathan Cape

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• Delivering the State of the Union? That bloke couldn't deliver pizza.

  Clive James

  Unions, Classic, States

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• Whoever called snooker "chess with balls" was rude, but right.

  Clive James

  Sports, Rude, Balls

  Clive James (2013). “Snakecharmers In Texas”, p.231, Pan Macmillan

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• The rattle of plastic keys reminds me of a squadron of butterflies failing to fight their way out of a paper bag.

  Clive James

  Butterfly, Fighting, Keys

  Clive James (2009). “Reliable Essays: The Best of Clive James: Reliable Essays:The Best of Clive James”, p.164, Pan Macmillan

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• You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty.

  Clive James

  Mahler, Never Trust, Should

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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.

  Clive James

  Crazy, Want, Film

  Clive James (2009). “May Week Was In June”, p.77, Pan Macmillan

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• First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.

  Clive James

  Art, Interesting, Firsts

  Clive James (2015). “From the Land of Shadows”, p.77, Pan Macmillan

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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.

  Clive James

  Book, Should Have, Discipline

  "Clive James: life through the prism of illness". "PM" with Mark Colvin, www.abc.net.au. August 21, 2015.

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• Disco dancing is just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail.

  Clive James

  Dancing, Nails, Giants

  Clive James (2015). “The Crystal Bucket”, p.103, Pan Macmillan

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• In London there was no home cooking worthy of the name. When you were in funds you ate out. But only the people whose faces appeared in such publications as Town and Queen could afford to eat in restaurants serving food which would leave them looking and feeling better instead of worse.

  Clive James

  Funny, Queens, Humorous

  Clive James (2012). “Always Unreliable: Memoirs”, p.307, Pan Macmillan

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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.

  Clive James

  Funny, Mother, Humorous

  Clive James (2013). “The Complete Unreliable Memoirs”, p.150, Pan Macmillan

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• Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.

  Clive James

  Book, Writing, Age

  "Summer Series: Clive James, in the face of death". "PM" with Mark Colvin, www.abc.net.au. December 21, 2015.

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• The provincial intellectual is doomed to arguing at low level... there is still no Australian literary world, not in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It is some consolation to realise that there is no literary world in Birmingham or Los Angeles either. I have heard there is one in Montreal, but I don't believe it. The literary world is in London and New York, the only cities big enough to sustain magazines which can afford to reject copy.

  Clive James

  Art, New York, Believe

  Clive James (2013). “Snakecharmers In Texas”, p.28, Pan Macmillan

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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.

  Clive James

  Thinking, People, Might

  Clive James (2008). “Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts”, p.215, W. W. Norton & Company

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• One of the virtues of the NHS... it doesn't worry you about money at the moment when you're least capable of doing anything about it.

  Clive James

  Nhs, Worry, Classic

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• Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.

  Clive James

  Writing, Prose And Poetry, Starvation

  "'I'm dying, I just look remarkably cheerful' says Clive James". "7.30" with Philip Williams, www.abc.net.au. August 19, 2015.

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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

  Vocabulary, Way, Language

  "Summer Series: Clive James, in the face of death". Interview with Mark Colvin, www.abc.net.au. January 4, 2016.

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• I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates... Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.

  Clive James

  Fate, Egomaniacs, Cosmos

  "North Face of Soho". Book by Clive James, 2006.

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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.

  Clive James

  Thinking, Poet, Great Things

  "Clive James on turning his ‘last time on earth’ into a writing wellspring". Interview with Art Beat, www.pbs.org. December 3, 2013.

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• You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.

  Clive James

  Fall, Falling Apart, Young

  "Clive James on turning his ‘last time on earth’ into a writing wellspring". Interview with Ellen Rolfes, www.pbs.org. December 3, 2013.

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• 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

  California, Smoking, Missing

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• The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.

  Clive James

  Hindsight, Inevitable, Belittle

  Clive James (2008). “Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts”, p.180, W. W. Norton & Company

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