I work on the assumption, or let it be the fear, that the reader will stop reading if I stop being interesting.
Clive JamesRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses a deep passion for writing and the joy it brings to the author.
Clive James reflects on his enduring love for writing, emphasizing that it has been a fundamental aspect of his life for nearly seven decades. He distinguishes himself as a writer first and foremost, whose performances stem from his writing, underscoring the thrill and satisfaction he derives from the craft of writing itself.
Themes
WritingPassionCreativityThrillPerformanceArt
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary workshop to inspire budding authors.
More from Clive James
All quotes →Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
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Murray sounds like a blindfolded man riding a unicycle on the rim of the pit of doom, the men actually facing the danger are all so taciturn that you might as well try interviewing the cars themselves.
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Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like - Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything - but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there
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Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world.
Clive JamesRead
I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates... Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.
Clive JamesRead
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