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
essence class justice
The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivations.
niece names looks
My niece is - her name is Sasha, is currently learning Russian at Melbourne University and I look forward to the day when I can talk to her about Pushkin.
effort done honest
All honest labor becomes easy; it only becomes hard when done with unwillingness.
wisdom thinking world
Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
opinion talent natural
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.
kgb secret british
The British secret service was staffed at one point almost entirely by alcoholic homosexuals working for the KGB
mistake golf men
In the Bob Hope Golf Classic, the participation of President Gerald Ford was more than enough to remind you that the nuclear button was at one stage at the disposal of a man who might have either pressed it by mistake or else pressed it deliberately in order to obtain room service.
technology college university-degrees
Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.
narrative diaries philosopher
Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.
effort television demand
All television ever did was shrink the demand for ordinary movies. The demand for extraordinary movies increased. If any one thing is wrong with the movie industry today, it is the unrelenting effort to astonish.
missing taught facts
I taught myself Russian, which was very, very useful, especially for poetry and in fact if you can't read Pushkin in Russian, you're really missing something.
dirty cities names
Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like - Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything - but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there
player wimbledon way
A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds.
change people television
Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.