The first language that I learned was Italian in Italy in the early and middle-'60s and I had to do that to… — Clive James Copy Share Image
In between the Queen and the First Lady, Nancy Reagan, sat Tony Richardson, looking very calm. Later on it emerged that this… — Clive James Copy Share Image
First-rate science fiction was, and remains, more interesting than second-rate art. — Clive James Copy Share Image
I've got life for a subject because as life starts to drain away, you start seeing very clearly what life is, for… — Clive James Copy Share Image
Like most people who smoked umpteen cigarettes a day, I tasted only the first one. The succeeding umpteen minus one were a… — Clive James Copy Share Image
Here was my first lesson on the resolutely maintained untidiness and ill-health of the English upper orders. In baggy evening dress and… — Clive James Copy Share Image
In the movies first impressions are everything. Or, to put it less drastically, in the movies there are no later impressions without… — Clive James Copy Share Image
My wife spoke perfect Italian and she was very beautiful and very suave Italian men were crowding around her, talking all the time and… — Clive James Copy Share Image
The streets, at least in this part of town, seemed impossibly clean in comparison to London. The public telephones were unvandalised. For a London… — Clive James Copy Share Image
In London there was no home cooking worthy of the name. When you were in funds you ate out. But only the people whose… — Clive James Copy Share Image
Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits. — Clive James Copy Share Image
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… — Clive James Copy Share Image
Pound had argued - and Eliot had helped him prove - that a poem could be sustained by memorable moments. Olson proved that it… — Clive James Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones. — Clive James Copy Share Image
“Too many of my friends are dead, and others wrecked By various diseases of the intellect Or failing body. How am I still upright?… — clive james Copy Share Image
