Clive James
Clive James
Clive James AO CBEis an Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist, best known for his autobiographical series Unreliable Memoirs, for his chat shows and documentaries on British television and for his prolific journalism. He has lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 1962...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionMemoirist
Date of Birth7 October 1939
CountryAustralia
Clive James quotes about
drinking simple artist
When I finally embraced abstinence it was because of the simple urge to work a longer day. Thus, without joining Alcoholics Anonymous, I was at last able to leave Piss-Artists Notorious.
perspective secret desire
Being young is wonderful. But one of the secrets of being a human individual - a mature human individual shall we put it rather grandly - is that you can see this desire in perspective.
looks schwarzenegger condom
Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a condom full of walnuts....
confusion way abstract
She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short.
sick childhood want
Sick of being a prisoner of my childhood, I want to put it behind me.
fun real feelings
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.
wisdom dull fiction
Fiction is life with the dull bits left out.
good-life life-is fame
A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a life is no life at all.
witty powerful science
It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
art writing performing
Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.
art expression long
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.
art new-york believe
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.
art writing years
Almost 70 years have gone by, and I've still got that feeling when I write... Writing, for me, is still it. It has always been the basis of everything I do. I'm a writer who performs, not a performer who writes. I love the act of writing. It's still a thrill for me.
art interesting fiction
First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art.