My wife spoke perfect Italian and she was very beautiful and very suave Italian men were crowding around her, talking all the… — Clive James Copy Share Image
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
The Language Laboratory at Cambridge is a very good way of finding out about grammar and the vocabulary and that's why I… — Clive James Copy Share Image
If we want a book to do more than what it does, that's a condemnation. If we want it to do more… — Clive James Copy Share Image
Once, BBC television had echoed BBC radio in being a haven for standard English pronunciation. Then regional accents came in: a democratic… — Clive James Copy Share Image
I'm certainly not a linguist. I learned what languages I could learn in order to read books and I can't really speak… — 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
