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. Clive James More Quotes by Clive James More Quotes From Clive James 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. Clive James memorable writing people Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation. Clive James starvation prose-and-poetry writing 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. Clive James documentaries vegas people Every sentence he manages to utter scatters its component parts like pond water from a verb chasing its own tail. Clive James ponds verbs water I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better. Clive James energy use thinking I actually didn't like that feeling of being out of touch because what I do depends on being in touch. But it's fun to talk about. That's one of the real dangers of drugs: they're too much fun to talk about. Clive James drug real fun The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight. Clive James belittle inevitable hindsight 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. Clive James age memories civilization In Italy, for the same price as a typical British hamburger meal including sweet, a builder's labourer could eat like a king - rather better in fact, because pasta dishes gain from being kept simple. Clive James kings sweet funny A lot of my poems are about how ill I am and how I probably won't live beyond next week. I publish a poem and everyone says 'cluck cluck, how wonderful, how brave', but then embarrassingly I'm still here! You see the problem? Clive James problem brave next-week All I can do is turn a phrase until it catches the light. Clive James turns phrases light One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying to absorb him. Clive James poetry literature trying 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. Clive James food country people 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. Clive James shoes cutting funny Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it could be sustained by unmemorable ones, provided that the texture of the accumulated jottings avoided the sound of failed poetry. Clive James poetry sound memorable A sceptic finds Dallas absurd. A cynic thinks the public doesn't Clive James dallas classic thinking Not everyone who wants to make a film is crazy, but almost everyone who is crazy wants to make a film. Clive James film crazy want I saw the film Pearl Harbour and it made me wish that the Japanese had bombed Hollywood instead! Clive James hollywood pearls wish The key to effective teaching is to remember how you learned. Clive James keys teaching remember All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power. Clive James tendencies corruption intellectual
