One way or another, all the poets of the thirties and forties reacted to Auden, either by rejecting him or trying 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
Dinner was meat - not hunks of meat, as in Australia, but pathetic scraps of meat, as in Britain - which the… — Clive James Copy Share Image
Roscoe Tanner seems to have found a way of making his service go even faster, so that the ball is now quite… — Clive James Copy Share Image
A traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early… — Clive James Copy Share Image
The rattle of plastic keys reminds me of a squadron of butterflies failing to fight their way out of a paper bag. — Clive James Copy Share Image
She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short. — 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
