Quotes from Clive Sinclair

Every year in late June, Custer's Last Stand is reenacted on the high plains of Montana. When Custer led out the 7th Cavalry in 2003 - the year I witnessed it - the audience stood and cheered with turbo-charged patriotism.

This was the wonder of advertising; the complete absence of cynicism. It may have many mansions, but it has no room for Doubting Thomases.

Santa Cruz is blessed not only with natural wonders, but also with gifted souls who can fashion nature's bounty into man-made treasures.

Deadwood lies at the northern tip of the Black Hills, where the land is ancient and rubbed smooth by time. The Black Hills are more rugged at their southern extremity, where bare granite forms pinnacles and spires.

Of course the 19th century remained in blissful ignorance of post-modern irony, and the dime novels were made without end.

It would be a big mistake to think that Chekhov was a natural, that he did not have to work for his effects and singular style.

As Annie Proulx is to Wyoming, so is Jane Candia Coleman to Arizona.

Tel Aviv is buzzing with so much life, you could bottle it and sell it as honey, and even Jerusalem has a certain fizz. But if you want to see anger, go to Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon.

At school, I never had a hold on English history, and cheder was a place run by sadistic incompetents, so I felt alienated from the Jewish part of my past.

I'll tell you now that I hate myself for many reasons, but being Jewish is not one of them.

For me, Jews and football go together like a horse and carriage.

My own zigzag path through life led me back to Santa Cruz in the early Eighties, and I have revisited regularly since. The place hasn't changed: head in the clouds, backside on the hills and feet in the ocean - one of the most decent and beautiful places on earth.

The idea of the split personality is as old as Genesis. For a start, Eve was manufactured from Adam's rib. Then there's Cain and Abel, twins at war. They were followed by Esau and Jacob, likewise divisible into hairy and smooth types.

In 1966, I bought my parents a carriage clock for their silver wedding anniversary. It was last wound 30 years later, in December 1996, the month my father died.

Many years ago, when I lived in the mini-Siberia they call East Anglia, I was awakened in the early hours by the sound of a pantechnicon being loaded. Peeping through the curtains, I observed the grocer doing a runner with all his chattels and his family.

I went to UC Santa Cruz, overlooking the Bay of Monterey and Santa Cruz, in 1969. Back then, the city was part-hippie, part-surfer, but mostly retired chicken farmer.

Copywriting cuts the communication cord between word and feeling. By offering instant gratification, it atrophies more subtle emotions.