230 Quotes by Clive James

All intellectual tendencies are corrupted when they consort with power.

The only battlefield where victoryIs measured by the victim's ecstasy,And one soft cry is worth a city burning.

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

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

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.

The clavadista checks the towerOn the cliffs from which he divesTurning two thirds of the way downTo mark the pointWhere all the somersaults are overAnd he must go in feet first or else break

The sound of the sea you hear in Proust, as if the whole book were a shell held to your ear, is the sound of the amniotic fluid, reminding you, across all your barriers of self-protection, that the first thing you ever heard was voices in the water.

The past is real but marbled by beliefsThat turned to myth as time eroded them.

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