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
war air people
How much atonement is enough? The bombing must be allowed as at least part-payment: those of our young people who are concerned about the moral problem posed by the Allied air offensive should at least consider the moral problem that would have been posed if the German civilian population had not suffered at all.
humorous people smoking
Like most people who smoked umpteen cigarettes a day, I tasted only the first one. The succeeding umpteen minus one were a compulsive ritual which had no greater savour than the fumes of burning money.
writing people too-much
People should be stopped from writing poetry. There's far too much of it. And if they're any good, they'll go ahead anyways.
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.
country food people
The British hamburger thus symbolised, with savage neatness, the country's failure to provide its ordinary people with food which did anything more for them than sustain life.
change people television
Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
running people towers
The repeat run of Fawlty Towers drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of The Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics.
las-vegas people documentaries
The thing about making a documentary in Las Vegas is there isn't much to film apart from other people making documentaries about Las Vegas.
memorable writing people
I try to be specific. One thought at a time. Clear. Articulate. And above all, memorable, if you can be. You'd like to write phrases that people can't forget as soon as they read them.
worry world alive
Stop worrying - nobody gets out of this world alive.
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.
memories civilization age
If the humanism that makes civilization civilized is to be preserved into the new century, it will need advocates. These advocates will need a memory, and part of that memory will need to be of an age in which they were not yet alive.
butterfly fighting keys
The rattle of plastic keys reminds me of a squadron of butterflies failing to fight their way out of a paper bag.
mahler never-trust should
You should never trust anyone who listens to Mahler before they're forty.