Quotes by Clive James

“All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.”

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.”

“Democracy is even more important for what it prevents than for what it provides.”

“If you don't know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as well read until they do.”

“The childish urge to understand everything doesn't necessarily fade when the time approaches for you to do the most adult thing of all: vanish.”

“Apparently Burgess shares the gutter press assumption that those who achieve fame should be made to suffer from it.”

“Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology.”

“It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.”

“She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short.”

“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.”

“Most first novels are disguised autobiographies. This autobiography is a disguised novel.”

“Rilke used to say that no poet would mind going to gaol, since he would at least have time to explore the treasure house of his memory. In many respects Rilke was a prick.”

“I was born in 1939. The other big event of that year was the outbreak of the Second World War, but for the moment that did not affect me.”

“My mother had naturally spiced the pudding with sixpences and threepenny bits, called zacs and trays respectively. Grandpa had collected one of these in the oesophagus. He gave a protracted, strang...”

“I remember the shock of seeing Ray undressed. He looked as if he had a squirrel hanging there. I had an acorn.”

“Children in Australia are still named after movies and sporting events. You can tell roughly the year the swimming star Shane Gould was born. It was about the time Shane was released. There was a f...”

“Herzen was closer to the truth when he said that every memory calls up a dozen others. The real miracle of Proust is the discipline with which he stemmed the flow. Everything is a Madeleine.”

“It often happens that we are most touched by what we are least capable of. Evanescent delicacy is not the quality in the arts that I admire most, but it is often the characteristic by which I am mo...”

“Riding the crest, I diversified, exploiting a highly marketable capacity to fart at will... By mastering this skill I set myself on a par with those court jesters of old who could wow the monarch a...”

“The whole secret of raising a fart in class is to make it sound as if it is punctuating, or commenting upon, what the teacher is saying. Timing, not ripeness, is all. 'And since x tends to y as c t...”