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
reason midget
(Of Marilyn Monroe) She was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short
moving common-sense dancing
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.
saws memoir versions
The Canadian version of Julius Caesar's memoirs? I came, I saw, I coped.
giving-up wall artist
The secret for an artist is to make that a subject and not bang your head against the wall and give up. But to turn it into and treat the new subject matter, which is one's own vanishing.
chess balls snooker
Snooker is just chess with balls.
common-sense dancing common
A sense of humour is common sense dancing.
mind easy made
Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.
fall falling-apart young
You can't be young always. The day will come when everything will fall apart.
stars war writing
Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.
thinking people might
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.
giving first-impression might
In the movies first impressions are everything. Or, to put it less drastically, in the movies there are no later impressions without a first impression, because you will have stopped watching. Sometimes a critic persuades you to give an unpromising-looking movie a chance, but the movie had better convey the impression pretty quickly that the critic might be right.
book writing age
Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.
dog art writing
What is Camille Paglia doing, writing that an actress as gifted as Anne Heche has the mental depth of a pancake? How many pancake brains could do what Heche did with David Mamet's dialogue in Wag the Dog? No doubt Heche has been stuck with a few bad gigs, but Paglia, of all people, must be well aware that being an actress is not the same safe ride as being the tenured university professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
california missing smoking
I won't have to miss smoking any more. Nobody smokes where I'm going: It's like a row of restaurants in California.