You can never get a woman to sit down and listen to a drum solo. Clive James More Quotes by Clive James More Quotes From Clive James 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 taught missing facts Ban poetry. And make sure that anyone caught reading it is expelled from school. Then it will acquire the glamour. Clive James glamour reading school I'm certainly not a linguist. I learned what languages I could learn in order to read books and I can't really speak them. I couldn't have stayed out of jail in most of them. Clive James jail order book When I was very young, one of my favourite books was Captain's Courageous and I suppose one of the reasons I loved it, it was a life I knew I should have had, learning all the different bits of the ship and learning to catch fish and rig sails and to -all the things that I never learned and I never learned the discipline, but I hungered after it. Clive James discipline should-have book I love reading about the sea. I love reading about it a lot more than actually being on the sea, when you think about it. Clive James reading sea thinking It's my mission to tell the Australians from abroad in my work that Australia is a wonderful place. Clive James missions australia wonderful Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer. Clive James performing writing art The Language Laboratory at Cambridge is a very good way of finding out about grammar and the vocabulary and that's why I learned to read German and later on I added Spanish, the standard European languages. Clive James vocabulary language way My wife spoke perfect Italian and she was very beautiful and very suave Italian men were crowding around her, talking all the time and if I was to even understand what was going on, I had to learn the language fast. Clive James italian beautiful men The first language that I learned was Italian in Italy in the early and middle-'60s and I had to do that to keep up with the young men who were courting my wife. Clive James wife italian men I think the great trick of doing my sort of thing is to learn to use your downtime, and of course in the media and especially in television, there's a heck of a lot of time of waiting around. And I think the trick is to use that. Clive James waiting-around media thinking Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones. Clive James age writing book It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that. Clive James want writing thinking My wife and I just started listening to the late Beethoven Quartets together, an activity I recommend for all married couples, but that doesn't really mean that I'm finished reading. Clive James couple reading mean The great thing about living until you get a bit older if you are a writer, and especially a poet, is that you have more life to reflect on. And I think that if I am better now - and I think that I am probably better than I was - is because that I simply have more to think about, more to get under control, more to understand. Clive James great-things poet thinking Being young is wonderful. But one of the secrets of being a human individual - a mature human individual shall we put it rather grandly - is that you can see this desire in perspective. Clive James perspective secret desire Young men especially - I don't know if young women feel much the same - but young men think they are immortal, automatically. They have no idea of time because they have so much energy and I was like that. Clive James men ideas thinking A sense of humor is just common sense dancing. Clive James Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing. Clive James sense-of-humor different humor moving
