Clive James Writing Quotations

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.

Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation.

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.

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.

Little books are the things to write at my age, I've decided. Avoid the big ones, go for the little ones.

Humphrey Searle writes music that sounds like the theme from 'Star Wars' played backwards through a washing machine.

I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Writing is a performance art for me. They're very closely aligned, writing and performing. But I'm a writer, not a performer.