230 Quotes by Clive James

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.

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.

(Of Marilyn Monroe) She was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short

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.

The Canadian version of Julius Caesar's memoirs? I came, I saw, I coped.

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.

Snooker is just chess with balls.

A sense of humour is common sense dancing.

Mocking Hugh Hefner is easy to do, and in my mind should be made easier.