Clive James: Trending quotes

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Clive James: 302 quotes6 likes

“On Miss World (BBC 1) Patrick Lichfield and Sacha Distel helped herd the beef. Even further down-market, The Royal Variety Performance (BBC 1) was hosted by Max Bygraves, who tried the time-honoured gimmick of singing the finale at the start. 'And if you doan like our finish / You doan have to stay for the show.”

Thanks. Click.
'The Truly Strong Man'
Essays and reviews, The Crystal Bucket (1982)

“Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film. It is just one of the things that crazy people want to do, like starting a law suit or sending long, unsolicited letters to people in the public eye. A letter from a nutter has a recognisable format and orthography, as if all letter-writing nutters have to go through some kind of Top Gun nutter-letter-writing academy.”

Source: Memoirs, May Week Was in June (1990), p. 93

“Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.”

'Introduction'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)

“Santayana was probably wrong when he said that those who forget the past are condemned to relive it. Those who remember are condemned to relive it too.”

Ibid.
Essays and reviews

“Sartre, whose underground activities had never amounted to anything except a secret meeting on Wednesday to decide whether there should be another meeting the following Tuesday, not only claimed the status of Resistance veteran but called down vengeance on people whose behaviour had not really been all that much more reprehensible than his own.”

'Raymond Aron' p. 35
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

“He had a conspicuous individual talent, but it was interpretive, not directly creative. He could never have emulated Chaplin, Keaton or Jacques Tati and set up a whole project by himself, controlling its every detail even if the task took years. But there is no point carping. He had such a protean capacity that it would have been a miracle if he had been in full command of it.”

Ibid.
Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006)

“From the same song”

Poems and song lyrics

“From 'We Being Ghosts'
Well, good to see you. Sorry I have to fly.
I'm struggling with a deadline, God knows why,
And ghosts keep interrupting. Think of me
The way I do of you. Quite often. Constantly.”

Poems and song lyrics

“Introduction' p. XVIII”

Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

“In the twelfth century the Basque fisherman of Biarritz used to hunt whales with deadly efficiency. When the whales sensibly moved away, the Basques chased them further and further, with consequence that the fishermen of Biarritz discovered America before Columbus did.”

This is a matter for local pride but on a larger view is not quite so stunning, since with the possible exception of the Swiss everybody discovered America before Columbus did
'Postcard from Biarritz'
Essays and reviews, Flying Visits (1984)

“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 judgement and should be trusted with nothing.”

Essays and reviews, Clive James On Television (1991)