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I Work On The Assumption, Or Let It Be The Fear, That The Reader Will Stop Reading If I Stop Being Interesting.
-Clive James
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I Work On The

Clive James
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I Work On The Assumption, Or Let It Be The Fear, That The Reader Will Stop Reading If I Stop Being Interesting.

Understanding the Quote: "i work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that..."

This quote by Clive James reflects deeply on the theme of reading. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Reading, Writing, Interesting, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Clive James interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Clive James

Clive James is celebrated for insightful thoughts on reading and writing. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Reading
Writing
Interesting
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Jack Aubrey Is A Tremendous Tower Of Strength And You Always Want To Read About Him.
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Want
You Can Never Get A Woman To Sit Down And Listen To A Drum Solo.
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Experts Say Men Think Of Sex Every 10 Seconds... What Do They Think Of In The Other Nine?
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The Language Laboratory At Cambridge Is A Very Good Way Of Finding Out About Grammar And The Vocabulary And That's Why I Learned To Read German And Later On I Added Spanish, The Standard European Languages.
Vocabulary
Way
Language
The First Language That I Learned Was Italian In Italy In The Early And Middle-'60s And I Had To Do That To Keep Up With The Young Men Who Were Courting My Wife.
Italian
Men
Wife
The Streets, At Least In This Part Of Town, Seemed Impossibly Clean In Comparison To London. The Public Telephones Were Unvandalised. For A London Telephone Booth To Look Like That It Would Have To Be Guarded Around The Clock By The Sas.
America
Looks
World
Here Was My First Lesson On The Resolutely Maintained Untidiness And Ill-health Of The English Upper Orders. In Baggy Evening Dress And Old Before Their Time, They Displayed Gapped And Tangled Teeth In Loosely Open Mouths. Gently Shedding Dandruff, They Lurched Across The Lawn. When They Stood At The Bar They Looked Like Lee Trevino Putting.
Funny
Humorous
Order
Prejudices Are Useless. Call Los Angeles Any Dirty Name You Like - Six Suburbs In Search Of A City, Paradise With A Lobotomy, Anything - But The Fact Remains That You Are Already Living In It Before You Get There
Dirty
Cities
Names
As Far As Talent Goes, Marilyn Monroe Was So Minimally Gifted As To Be Almost Unemployable, And Anyone Who Holds To The Opinion That She Was A Great Natural Comic Identifies Himself Immediately As A Dunce.
Opinion
Talent
Natural
Mocking Hugh Hefner Is Easy To Do, And In My Mind Should Be Made Easier.
Mind
Easy
Easier
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.
Funny
Sweet
Kings
I Saw The Film Pearl Harbour And It Made Me Wish That The Japanese Had Bombed Hollywood Instead!
Wish
Hollywood
Pearls
In London There Was No Home Cooking Worthy Of The Name. When You Were In Funds You Ate Out. But Only The People Whose Faces Appeared In Such Publications As Town And Queen Could Afford To Eat In Restaurants Serving Food Which Would Leave Them Looking And Feeling Better Instead Of Worse.
Funny
Queens
Humorous
I Taught Myself Russian, Which Was Very, Very Useful, Especially For Poetry And In Fact If You Can't Read Pushkin In Russian, You're Really Missing Something.
Missing
Taught
Facts
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.
Memorable
Writing
People
I Work On The Assumption, Or Let It Be The Fear, That The Reader Will Stop Reading If I Stop Being Interesting.
Reading
Writing
Interesting
John Mcenroe Looks As If He Is Serving Round The Edge Of An Imaginary Building.
Tennis
Looks
Building
A Decade Ago, Critics Suggested Biotech Crops Would Not Be Valuable In The Developing World. Now 90 Percent Of Farmers Who Benefit Are Resource-poor Farmers In Developing Countries. These Helped Alleviate 7.7 Million Subsistence Farmers In China, India, South Africa, The Philippines From Abject Poverty.
Country
World
Developing Countries
How Much Atonement Is Enough? The Bombing Must Be Allowed As At Least Part-payment: Those Of Our Young People Who Are Concerned About The Moral Problem Posed By The Allied Air Offensive Should At Least Consider The Moral Problem That Would Have Been Posed If The German Civilian Population Had Not Suffered At All.
Peace
War
Air
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?
Next Week
Brave
Problem
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.
Soup
Stones
Classic
I Won't Have To Miss Smoking Any More. Nobody Smokes Where I'm Going: It's Like A Row Of Restaurants In California.
California
Smoking
Missing
Philosophers Are Divided On The Question Of Whether The Narrative Therein Unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] Is Grippingly Boring Or Boringly Gripping.
Diaries
Narrative
Philosopher
Ban Poetry. And Make Sure That Anyone Caught Reading It Is Expelled From School. Then It Will Acquire The Glamour.
Reading
School
Glamour
Once, Bbc Television Had Echoed Bbc Radio In Being A Haven For Standard English Pronunciation. Then Regional Accents Came In: A Democratic Plus. Then Slipshod Usage Came In: An Egalitarian Minus. By Now Slovenly Grammar Is Even More Rife On The Bbc Channels Than On Itv. In This Regard A Decline Can Be Clearly Charted... If The Bbc, Once The Guardian Of The English Language, Has Now Become Its Most Implacable Enemy, Let Us At Least Be Grateful When The Massacre Is Carried Out With Style.
Grateful
Style
Enemy
Even In Moments Of Tranquility, Murray Walker Sounds Like A Man Whose Trousers Are On Fire.
Men
Fire
Sound
She Was Good At Playing Abstract Confusion In The Same Way That A Midget Is Good At Being Short.
Confusion
Way
Abstract
All Television Ever Did Was Shrink The Demand For Ordinary Movies. The Demand For Extraordinary Movies Increased. If Any One Thing Is Wrong With The Movie Industry Today, It Is The Unrelenting Effort To Astonish.
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Hollywood
This Quality Becomes Important At A Time When Almost Everyone Is A Poet. And As I Said, We Live In An Age Where Almost Everybody Is A Poet, But Scarcely Anyone Can Write A Poem.
Writing
Important
Age
Sick Of Being A Prisoner Of My Childhood, I Want To Put It Behind Me.
Sick
Childhood
Want
When I Was Young I Never Believed That Australia Was Anything Else Except Blessed. I Thought It Was A Little Dull When I Was Young, But That Was 'cause I Was A Snob.
Blessed
Australia
Causes
Every Sentence He Manages To Utter Scatters Its Component Parts Like Pond Water From A Verb Chasing Its Own Tail.
Water
Ponds
Verbs
Writers Quite Often Starve. And I'm Mainly Just Writing Critical Prose And Poetry, That's A Formula For Starvation.
Writing
Prose And Poetry
Starvation
The Smartest Move I Ever Made In Showbusiness Was To Start Off Looking Like The Kind Of Wreck I Would End Up As. I Was Already Aged In The Wood.
Moving
Wrecks
Woods
Whoever Called Snooker "chess With Balls" Was Rude, But Right.
Sports
Rude
Balls
One Way Or Another, All The Poets Of The Thirties And Forties Reacted To Auden, Either By Rejecting Him Or Trying To Absorb Him.
Poetry
Trying
Literature
Roscoe Tanner Seems To Have Found A Way Of Making His Service Go Even Faster, So That The Ball Is Now Quite Invisible, Like Stealth, The American Supersonic Bomber Which Nobody Has Ever Seen.
Tennis
Bombers
Balls
Anyone Afraid Of What He Thinks Television Does To The World Is Probably Just Afraid Of The World.
Wisdom
Thinking
Community
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.
Artist
Interesting
Phases
I've Only Got A Fraction Of The Energy I Once Had, But I Think I Probably Use It Better.
Thinking
Energy
Use
A Luxury Liner Is Really Just A Bad Play Surrounded By Water.
Play
Luxury
Water
Delivering The State Of The Union? That Bloke Couldn't Deliver Pizza.
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Classic
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When I Finally Embraced Abstinence It Was Because Of The Simple Urge To Work A Longer Day. Thus, Without Joining Alcoholics Anonymous, I Was At Last Able To Leave Piss-artists Notorious.
Funny
Humorous
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It Is A Good Rule In Life To Be Wary Of The Company Of People Who Think Of Themselves In The Third Person, No Matter How Well Justified They Might Seem To Be In Doing So.
Thinking
People
Might
A Traditional Fixture At Wimbledon Is The Way The Bbc Tv Commentary Box Fills Up With British Players Eliminated In The Early Rounds.
Player
Tennis
Wimbledon
The Inevitable Effect Of A Biographer's Hindsight Is To Belittle The Subject's Foresight.
Hindsight
Inevitable
Belittle
Twin Miracles Of Mascara, Her Eyes Looked Like The Corpses Of Two Small Crows That Had Crashed Into A Chalk Cliff.
Eye
Two
Miracle
The Secret For An Artist Is To Make That A Subject And Not Bang Your Head Against The Wall And Give Up. But To Turn It Into And Treat The New Subject Matter, Which Is One's Own Vanishing.
Giving Up
Wall
Artist
I Was Wrong, However, To Suppose That Sellers Thought The World Revolved Around Him. He Thought The Cosmos Did Too, And History, And The Fates... Like Every Egomaniac, He Behaved As If Everybody Else Spent Their Day Being As Interested In Him As He Was.
Fate
Egomaniacs
Cosmos
Not Everyone Who Wants To Make A Film Is Crazy, But Almost Everyone Who Is Crazy Wants To Make A Film.
Crazy
Want
Film
The Provincial Intellectual Is Doomed To Arguing At Low Level... There Is Still No Australian Literary World, Not In Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. It Is Some Consolation To Realise That There Is No Literary World In Birmingham Or Los Angeles Either. I Have Heard There Is One In Montreal, But I Don't Believe It. The Literary World Is In London And New York, The Only Cities Big Enough To Sustain Magazines Which Can Afford To Reject Copy.
Art
New York
Believe
It's My Mission To Tell The Australians From Abroad In My Work That Australia Is A Wonderful Place.
Australia
Wonderful
Missions
It's A Big Thing To Call Yourself A Poet. All I Can Say Is That I Have Always Written Poems. I Don't Think I'm Interested In Any Discussion About Whether I'm A Good Poet, A Bad Poet Or A Great Poet. But I Am Sure, I Want To Write Great Poems. I Think Every Poet Should Want That.
Writing
Thinking
Want
The Great Thing About Living Until You Get A Bit Older If You Are A Writer, And Especially A Poet, Is That You Have More Life To Reflect On. And I Think That If I Am Better Now - And I Think That I Am Probably Better Than I Was - Is Because That I Simply Have More To Think About, More To Get Under Control, More To Understand.
Thinking
Poet
Great Things
An Education Without A Bible Education Is No Education.
Classic
Spending All My Remaining Money On A Ticket To Florence Was Rendered Needlessly Complicated By The Fact That None Of The Ticket-sellers Had Ever Heard Of The Place. At Last Their Supervisor Showed Up And Set Them Straight By Informing Them That The City They Had Always Referred To As 'firenze' Was In Reality Called Florence.
Funny
Humorous
Italian
"nationwide" Featured An Amazing Collection Of Apprentice Impersonators. From All Over Britain, Schoolchildren Materialised Via Local Studios To Give Us Their Imitations Of The Mighty. There Were At Least Three Uncannily Accurate Margaret Thatchers, Their Eyelids Fatigued With Condescension And Their Voices Swooping And Whining Like Dive-bombers.
Voice
America
Giving
On The Correctly Formed Pubescent Girl, A Speedo Looked Wonderful. When It Was Wet, It Was An Incitement To Riot.
Girl
Wonderful
Incitement
What Is Camille Paglia Doing, Writing That An Actress As Gifted As Anne Heche Has The Mental Depth Of A Pancake? How Many Pancake Brains Could Do What Heche Did With David Mamet's Dialogue In Wag The Dog? No Doubt Heche Has Been Stuck With A Few Bad Gigs, But Paglia, Of All People, Must Be Well Aware That Being An Actress Is Not The Same Safe Ride As Being The Tenured University Professor Of Humanities And Media Studies At The University Of The Arts In Philadelphia.
Dog
Art
Writing
Visitors Who Come From The Soviet Union And Tell You How Marvelous It Is To Be Able To Look At Public Buildings Without Advertisements Stuck All Over Them Are Just Telling You That They Can't Decipher The Cyrillic Alphabet.
Looks
Unions
Able
In The Twelfth Century The Basque Fishermen Of Biarritz Used To Hunt Whales With Deadly Efficiency. When The Whales Sensibly Moved Away, The Basques Chased Them Further And Further, With The Consequence That The Fishermen Of Biarritz Discovered America Before Columbus Did. This Is A Matter For Local Pride But On A Larger View It Is Not Quite So Stunning, Since With The Possible Exception Of The Swiss Everybody Discovered America Before Columbus Did.
Pride
Views
Whales
Among Artists Without Talent Marxism Will Always Be Popular, Since It Enables Them To Blame Society For The Fact That Nobody Wants To Hear What They Have To Say.
Artist
Want
Facts
Little Books Are The Things To Write At My Age, I've Decided. Avoid The Big Ones, Go For The Little Ones.
Book
Writing
Age
One Of The Virtues Of The Nhs... It Doesn't Worry You About Money At The Moment When You're Least Capable Of Doing Anything About It.
Nhs
Worry
Classic
Disco Dancing Is Just The Steady Thump Of A Giant Moron Knocking In An Endless Nail.
Dancing
Nails
Giants
Reading And Writing... Are Exciting. The Most Exciting Things I Can Think Of. And Now, As I Reflect... I Have To Say That I've Been Lucky In That I'm Amused By What I Do - Sufficiently Amused.
Art
Reading
Writing
John Mcenroe Has Hair Like Badly Turned Broccoli.
Hair
Tennis
Broccoli
The Benson And Hedges Cup Was Won By Mcenroe ... He Was As Charming As Always, Which Means That He Was As Charming As A Dead Mouse In A Loaf Of Bread.
Mean
Tennis
Bread
A Sceptic Finds Dallas Absurd. A Cynic Thinks The Public Doesn't
Thinking
Dallas
Classic
A Sense Of Humour Is Common Sense Dancing.
Common Sense
Dancing
Common
All Honest Labor Becomes Easy; It Only Becomes Hard When Done With Unwillingness.
Effort
Done
Honest
Sometimes I Feel If I Was Young Again, I Would Wrap A Bandana Around My Head Like Douglas Fairbanks Sr. And I Would Become A Pirate Of The Web. And I Would Go Around Stealing Poems And Assembling Into One Spot Like A Treasure Cave.
Pirate
Caves
Treasure
Arnold Schwarzenegger Looks Like A Brown Condom Full Of Walnuts.
Looks
Schwarzenegger
Condom
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.
Running
People
Television
In The Movies First Impressions Are Everything. Or, To Put It Less Drastically, In The Movies There Are No Later Impressions Without A First Impression, Because You Will Have Stopped Watching. Sometimes A Critic Persuades You To Give An Unpromising-looking Movie A Chance, But The Movie Had Better Convey The Impression Pretty Quickly That The Critic Might Be Right.
Giving
First Impression
Might
If We Want A Book To Do More Than What It Does, That's A Condemnation. If We Want It To Do More Of What It Does, That's An Endorsement.
Book
Want
Doe
It Is Only When They Go Wrong That Machines Remind You How Powerful They Are.
Witty
Powerful
Science
My Niece Is - Her Name Is Sasha, Is Currently Learning Russian At Melbourne University And I Look Forward To The Day When I Can Talk To Her About Pushkin.
Niece
Names
Looks
Almost 70 Years Have Gone By, And I've Still Got That Feeling When I Write... Writing, For Me, Is Still It. It Has Always Been The Basis Of Everything I Do. I'm A Writer Who Performs, Not A Performer Who Writes. I Love The Act Of Writing. It's Still A Thrill For Me.
Art
Writing
Years
When I Was Very Young, One Of My Favourite Books Was Captain's Courageous And I Suppose One Of The Reasons I Loved It, It Was A Life I Knew I Should Have Had, Learning All The Different Bits Of The Ship And Learning To Catch Fish And Rig Sails And To -all The Things That I Never Learned And I Never Learned The Discipline, But I Hungered After It.
Book
Should Have
Discipline
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.
Vegas
People
Documentaries
All I Can Do Is Turn A Phrase Until It Catches The Light.
Light
Phrases
Turns
Being Young Is Wonderful. But One Of The Secrets Of Being A Human Individual - A Mature Human Individual Shall We Put It Rather Grandly - Is That You Can See This Desire In Perspective.
Perspective
Secret
Desire
Men Never Sound More Stupid Than When They're Telling You They're A Very Complex Personality.
Stupid
Men
Personality
Bjorn Borg Looks Like A Hunchbacked, Jut-bottomed Version Of Lizabeth Scott, Impersonating A Bearded Apache Princess.
Princess
Tennis
Looks
Like A Volvo, Bjorn Borg Is Rugged, Has Good After-sales Service, And Is Very Dull.
Tennis
Dull
Borg
In Recent Years, Perhaps Encouraged By Competition From Mcdonald's, The British Hamburger Has Become A Credit To The Nation. At The Time Of Which I Speak, It Looked Like A Scorched Beer-coaster Or A Tenderized Disc Brake.
Funny
Humorous
Beer
You Should Never Trust Anyone Who Listens To Mahler Before They're Forty.
Mahler
Never Trust
Should
In The Bob Hope Golf Classic (lwt) The Participation Of President Gerald Ford Was More Than Enough To Remind You That The Nuclear Button Was At One Stage At The Disposal Of A Man Who Might Have Either Pressed It By Mistake Or Else Pressed It Deliberately In Order To Obtain Room Service.
Mistake
Golf
Men
I Was Brought Up On The Proletarian Left, And I Remain There. The Fair Go For Workers Is Fundamental, And I Don't Believe The Free Market Has A Mind.
Believe
Mind
Fundamentals
Pound Had Argued - And Eliot Had Helped Him Prove - That A Poem Could Be Sustained By Memorable Moments. Olson Proved That It Could Be Sustained By Unmemorable Ones, Provided That The Texture Of The Accumulated Jottings Avoided The Sound Of Failed Poetry.
Memorable
Poetry
Sound
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.
Drug
Style
Going Out
In Between The Queen And The First Lady, Nancy Reagan, Sat Tony Richardson, Looking Very Calm. Later On It Emerged That This Was Because, Having Not Been Apprised Of The Placement Until He Was About To Sit Down, He Had Died Of Fright. To Have Expired Was To Be Fortunate.
Queens
America
World
The Key To Effective Teaching Is To Remember How You Learned.
Teaching
Keys
Remember
Generally It Is Our Failures That Civilize Us. Triumph Confirms Us In Our Habits.
Triumph
Habit
My Wife And I Just Started Listening To The Late Beethoven Quartets Together, An Activity I Recommend For All Married Couples, But That Doesn't Really Mean That I'm Finished Reading.
Couple
Reading
Mean
The Canadian Version Of Julius Caesar's Memoirs? I Came, I Saw, I Coped.
Saws
Memoir
Julius
A Life Without Fame Can Be A Good Life, But Fame Without A Life Is No Life At All.
Wisdom
Good Life
America
Television Is Simultaneously Blamed, Often By The Same People, For Worsening The World And For Being Powerless To Change It.
Change
People
Television
I Love Reading About The Sea. I Love Reading About It A Lot More Than Actually Being On The Sea, When You Think About It.
Reading
Thinking
Sea
His Pear-shaped Head, I Could Now See, Was Situated On Top Of A Pear-shaped Body, Which His Black Gown Caused To Resemble A Piece Of Fruit Going To A Funeral.
Funeral
Black
Fruit
Fiction Is Life With The Dull Bits Left Out.
Wisdom
Fiction
Dull
Freedom And Diversity Guard Each Other, And If A Country Could Form The Whole Of One's Character, Napoleon Iii And Victor Hugo Would Have Been The Same Person... If National Identity Means Anything, It Means Something That Comes With You Wherever You Go, And Stays With You No Matter How Long You Stay Away.
Country
Character
Mean
When You Cut It Up, Put The Pieces In Your Mouth And Swallowed Them, The British Hamburger Shaped Itself To The Bottom On Your Stomach Like Ballast, While Interacting With Your Gastric Juices To Form An Incipient Belch Of Enormous Potential, An Airship Which Had Been Inflated In A Garage. This Belch, When Silently Released, Would Cause People Standing Twenty Yards Away To Start Examining The Soles Of Their Shoes. The Vocalized Version Sounded Like A Bag Of Tools Thrown Into A Bog.
Funny
Cutting
Shoes
Like Most People Who Smoked Umpteen Cigarettes A Day, I Tasted Only The First One. The Succeeding Umpteen Minus One Were A Compulsive Ritual Which Had No Greater Savour Than The Fumes Of Burning Money.
Funny
Humorous
People
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.
Fun
Real
Drug
The Rattle Of Plastic Keys Reminds Me Of A Squadron Of Butterflies Failing To Fight Their Way Out Of A Paper Bag.
Butterfly
Fighting
Keys
I'm Certainly Not A Linguist. I Learned What Languages I Could Learn In Order To Read Books And I Can't Really Speak Them. I Couldn't Have Stayed Out Of Jail In Most Of Them.
Book
Order
Jail
Beyoncé And Pathos Are Strangers. Amy Winehouse And Pathos Are Flatmates, And You Should See The Kitchen.
Kitchen
Amy
Classic
Jimmy Connors Likes The Ball To Come At Him In A Straight Line, So That He Can Hit It Back In Another Straight Line. When It Comes To Him In A Curve, He Uses Up Half Of His Energy Straightening It Up Again.
Curves
Tennis
Energy
She [marilyn Monroe] Was Good At Being Inarticulately Abstracted For The Same Reason That Midgets Are Good At Being Short.
Reason
Midget
First-rate Science Fiction Was, And Remains, More Interesting Than Second-rate Art.
Art
Interesting
Firsts
Everyone Has A Right To A University Degree In America, Even If It's In Hamburger Technology.
Graduation
Technology
College
She Wasn't Just Beautiful. She Was Like The Sun Coming Up: Coming Up Giggling. She Was Giggling As If She Had Just Remembered Something Funny.
Beautiful
Sun
Classic
Writing Is A Performance Art For Me. They're Very Closely Aligned, Writing And Performing. But I'm A Writer, Not A Performer.
Art
Writing
Performing
Stop Worrying, Nobody Gets Out Of This World Alive.
Funny Inspirational
Worry
Alive
The Essence Of A Class System Is Not That The Privileged Are Conscious Of Their Privileges, But That The Deprived Are Conscious Of Their Deprivations.
Essence
Class
Justice
People Should Be Stopped From Writing Poetry. There's Far Too Much Of It. And If They're Any Good, They'll Go Ahead Anyways.
Writing
People
Too Much
The Literary Critic, Or The Critic Of Any Other Specific Form Of Artistic Expression, May Detach Himself From The World For As Long As The Work Of Art He Is Contemplating Appears To Do The Same.
Art
Expression
Long
The British Hamburger Thus Symbolised, With Savage Neatness, The Country's Failure To Provide Its Ordinary People With Food Which Did Anything More For Them Than Sustain Life.
Country
Food
People
You Can't Be Young Always. The Day Will Come When Everything Will Fall Apart.
Fall
Falling Apart
Young
It Is Almost Better To Be An Impulse Shirt-buyer Than An Impulse Shoe-buyer. I Have Worn Shirts That Made People Think I Was A Retired Mafia Hit-man Or A Yugoslavian Sports Convener From Split, But I Have Worn Shoes That Made People Think I Was Insane.
Sports
Men
Thinking
A Loose Horse Is Any Horse Sensible Enough To Get Rid Of Its Rider At An Early Stage And Carry On Unencumbered.
Horse
Enough
Stage
I Think The Great Trick Of Doing My Sort Of Thing Is To Learn To Use Your Downtime, And Of Course In The Media And Especially In Television, There's A Heck Of A Lot Of Time Of Waiting Around. And I Think The Trick Is To Use That.
Thinking
Media
Waiting Around
Young Men Especially - I Don't Know If Young Women Feel Much The Same - But Young Men Think They Are Immortal, Automatically. They Have No Idea Of Time Because They Have So Much Energy And I Was Like That.
Men
Thinking
Ideas
As A Work Of Art, It Reminds Me Of A Long Conversation Between Two Drunks
Wisdom
Art
Two
If The Humanism That Makes Civilization Civilized Is To Be Preserved Into The New Century, It Will Need Advocates. These Advocates Will Need A Memory, And Part Of That Memory Will Need To Be Of An Age In Which They Were Not Yet Alive.
Memories
Civilization
Age
Perhaps I Should Have Pointed Out More Often That Without Her (mother's) Guidance And Example I Might Have Gone Straight From Short Pants To Long Bay Gaol, Which In Those Days Was Still In Use And Heavily Populated By Larcenous Young Men Who Had Chosen Their Parents Less Wisely.
Funny
Mother
Humorous
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.
Moving
Dancing
Common Sense
They Had A... Dog Called Bluey. A Know Psychopath, Bluey Would Attack Himself If Nothing Else Was Available.
Funny
Dog
Psychopath
I've Got Life For A Subject Because As Life Starts To Drain Away, You Start Seeing Very Clearly What Life Is, For The First Time.
Firsts
Life Is
Drains
Snooker Is Just Chess With Balls.
Balls
Chess
Snooker
My Wife Spoke Perfect Italian And She Was Very Beautiful And Very Suave Italian Men Were Crowding Around Her, Talking All The Time And If I Was To Even Understand What Was Going On, I Had To Learn The Language Fast.
Beautiful
Italian
Men
Humphrey Searle Writes Music That Sounds Like The Theme From 'star Wars' Played Backwards Through A Washing Machine.
Stars
War
Writing
The British Secret Service Was Staffed At One Point Almost Entirely By Alcoholic Homosexuals Working For The Kgb
Kgb
Secret
Classic
Murray Sounds Like A Blindfolded Man Riding A Unicycle On The Rim Of The Pit Of Doom, The Men Actually Facing The Danger Are All So Taciturn That You Might As Well Try Interviewing The Cars Themselves.
Men
Car
Trying
Dinner Was Meat - Not Hunks Of Meat, As In Australia, But Pathetic Scraps Of Meat, As In Britain - Which The Girls Upstairs Transformed Into Edible Dishes By Heating It In Secret Ways And Adding Bits Of Stuff To It.
Funny
Girl
Humorous
All Intellectual Tendencies Are Corrupted When They Consort With Power.
Intellectual
Corruption
Tendencies
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