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Unreliable Memoirs QUOTES

Unreliable Memoirs QUOTES

1 " 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. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

2 " Funny Debates at both Cambridge and Oxford eventually helped to convince me that the only place to be amusing is in a serious context. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

3 " In those days you matched a block of balsa against a rudimentary diagram and got going with a razor blade, which sliced your thumb as readily as it carved the balsa. If the result was recognizable as an aeroplane, you were an expert. If your thumb was recognizable as a thumb, you were a genius. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

4 " The essence of a class system is not that the privileged are conscious of their privileges, but that the deprived are conscious of their deprivation. Deprived I never felt. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

5 " One parent is enough to spoil you but discipline takes two. I got too much of what I wanted and not enough of what I needed. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

6 " matched pair of Purdey shot-guns, one of which had not been fired, "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

7 " When the cover was lifted to reveal nothing but a heaped plate of pineapple chunks, however, there were people in the audience who could take no more. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

8 " row of damaged books which Davenport had failed to return to the London Library. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

9 " and Cate Blanchett in the same kitchen, for a cup of tea and a chat. The post-war Australian expatriates were looked at with suspicion by their countrymen early on. Later, they got too much favour. My own view is that, of those among us who sailed away to England in the early 1960s, those who soon sailed back again did best. This especially applied to the theatre. In earlier times, a long and powerfully "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

10 " George Russell had responded to yet another request for a reference, sending, by return air-letter, an encomium which would have sat extravagantly on the shoulders of Pico della Mirandola. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

11 " Cambridge will probably never get round to formally approving homosexuality, but the type of homosexual involved perhaps prefers a blind eye "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

12 " Raised in the hot sun, my idea of romance was to feel cold. North was a thrilling word to me. Balzac said that a novel should send the reader into another country. My dreams were like that. They still are. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

13 " Generally it is our failures that civilize us. Triumph confirms us in our habits. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

14 " sat transfixed by the rhythm of that voice – the strong view lightly stated. It wasn’t words plus pictures. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

15 " Dining out meant shepherd’s pie and bitter at the Anchor, Bankside. The Anchor was a little sooty brick Georgian pub on the Embankment. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

16 " in those days I construed absence of explicit opposition as a whole-hearted endorsement. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

17 " I forgave them, having surmised – correctly, as it turned out – that America was merely first in achieving a level of average income so high that even the mentally underprivileged were able to travel, and that shortly all the other industrialised countries would start exporting idiots too. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

18 " The pasta was always al dente, an expression which could be pressed into service as the name of a ferocious gangster. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

19 " inspection of kit, dress and rifle "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs

20 " In the Italian galleries even the guides regularly fingered the paint surface. "

― Clive James , Unreliable Memoirs