"Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a brown condom full of walnuts."
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Quote collection
Clive James quotes (page 2 of 7)
138 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgment and should be trusted with nothing."
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"If an artist is any good at all, then he or she will have a later phase that's more interesting than the early one."
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"Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation."
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"Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen."
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"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 phrases that people can't forget as soon as they read them."
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"Stop worrying, nobody gets out of this world alive."
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"On the correctly formed pubescent girl, a Speedo looked wonderful. When it was wet, it was an incitement to riot."
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"Everyone has a right to a university degree in America, even if it's in Hamburger Technology."
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"The entrée wasn't tender enough to be a paving stone and the gravy couldn't have been primordial soup because morphogenesis was already taking place."
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"I've only got a fraction of the energy I once had, but I think I probably use it better."
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"I actually didn't like that feeling of being out of touch because what I do depends on being in touch. But it's fun to talk about. That's one of the real dangers of drugs: they're too much fun to talk about."
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"The repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics."
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"In Italy, for the same price as a typical British hamburger meal including sweet, a builder's labourer could eat like a king - rather better in fact, because pasta dishes gain from being kept simple."
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"Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him."
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"Even in moments of tranquility, Murray Walker sounds like a man whose trousers are on fire."
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"A lot of my poems are about how ill I am and how I probably won't live beyond next week. I publish a poem and everyone says 'cluck cluck, how wonderful, how brave', but then embarrassingly I'm still here! You see the problem?"
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"The thing about making a documentary in Las Vegas is there isn't much to film apart from other people making documentaries about Las Vegas."
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"I was a big pothead for a short period. That was what ticked me off that I shouldn't go near hard drugs, actually, because I would consume the stuff as if it was going out of style and it rapidly occurred to me that if I ever tried a hard drug, the same thing would happen, so I never did."
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"I won't have to miss smoking any more. Nobody smokes where I'm going: It's like a row of restaurants in California."
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