Quotes from Clive James

Sartre and Camus were only two of the many thinkers about politics who, being gentiles, could stay in Paris and think about politics there if they chose. It was a dubious privilege.

more typical essay is the one on Karl Kraus, of which Kraus confessed that the only thing he understood was that it was about him.

Hamlet himself knew just what to expect: Steady reduction of his body mass Until the day, his very coffin wrecked, Some clown picked up his skull and said, 'Alas.

The pasta was always al dente, an expression which could be pressed into service as the name of a ferocious gangster.

Apart from the brave few who went underground and fought at the risk of their lives, the French intellectuals gave the Nazis little trouble, and were morally compromised as a consequence.

inspection of kit, dress and rifle

In the Italian galleries even the guides regularly fingered the paint surface.

the men sit around in the square scratching their crotches and dreaming up their next war.

Swearing by European norms of honour, it negotiated with democratically elected war criminals.

the NATO aircraft that are held to be the worst thing in the world by those who have no idea how bad the world can get.

Whoever said "Wagner's music isn't as bad as it sounds" was as wrong as he was funny,

a system of belief which confused the desirable and the inevitable was still a dogma.

Too many milieux injure an adaptable sensibility. There was once a chameleon whose owner, to keep it warm, put it on a gaudy Scottish plaid. The chameleon died of fatigue. —JEAN COCTEAU, LE POTOMAK

It isn't the man who wants to who continues the tradition, it's the man who can, and sometimes he's the man who knows least about it.

A fanatic redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.

In the course of the last forty years, the only part of the world that has enjoyed peace is the continent divided between two zones of political civilization both of them armed with atomic bombs. —RAYMOND ARON, LES DERNIÈRES ANNÉES DU SIÈCLE (THE LAST YEARS OF THE CENTURY), P. 68

His advocacy and understanding of Victor Hugo led to a close friendship,

although his love affair with Madame Hugo was not calculated to reinforce it.

Accusing your own mother of adultery to save your skin is creativity of a kind so special it can almost be called a talent.

Trotsky's idea of permanent revolution will always be attractive to the kind of romantic who believes that he is being oppressed by global capitalism when he maxes out his credit card.

Nationalism, as a state of mind, is all fervour and no judgement. National pride, however, is a different and better thing.

Cocteau thought of his own images. He really was as innovative as his admirers said. Their only mistake was to imagine that novelty was an ethos.

the application of effort should always be exactly measured: nothing by force, everything by logical progression.

Liberals and humanists are always saying that art is the soul of truth.