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
moving wrecks woods
The smartest move I ever made in showbusiness was to start off looking like the kind of wreck I would end up as. I was already aged in the wood.
funny cutting shoes
When you cut it up, put the pieces in your mouth and swallowed them, the British hamburger shaped itself to the bottom on your stomach like ballast, while interacting with your gastric juices to form an incipient belch of enormous potential, an airship which had been inflated in a garage. This belch, when silently released, would cause people standing twenty yards away to start examining the soles of their shoes. The vocalized version sounded like a bag of tools thrown into a bog.
firsts life-is drains
I've got life for a subject because as life starts to drain away, you start seeing very clearly what life is, for the first time.
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.