Quotes from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Friedell caught the essential truth about people prone to catch-all theories: they aren’t in search of the truth, they’re in search of themselves.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“When absolute power is on offer, talent fights to get in.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“When I first read The Rebel, this splendid line came leaping from the page like a dolphin from a wave. I memorized it instantly, and from then on Camus was my man. I wanted to write like that, in a prose that sang like poetry. I wanted to look like him. I wanted to wear a Bogart-style trench coat with the collar turned up, have an untipped Gauloise dangling from my lower lip, and die romantically in a car crash. At the time, the crash had only just happened. The wheels of the wrecked Facel Vega were practically still spinning, and at Sydney University I knew exiled French students, spiritually scarred by service in Indochina, who had met Camus in Paris: one of them claimed to have shared a girl with him. Later on, in London, I was able to arrange the trench coat and the Gauloise, although I decided to forgo the car crash until a more propitious moment. Much later, long after having realized that smoking French cigarettes was just an expensive way of inhaling nationalized industrial waste, I learned from Olivier Todd's excellent biography of Camus that the trench coat had been a gift from Arthur Koestler's wife and that the Bogart connection had been, as the academics say, no accident. Camus had wanted to look like Bogart, and Mrs. Koestler knew where to get the kit. Camus was a bit of an actor--he though, in fact, that he was a lot of an actor, although his histrionic talent was the weakest item of his theatrical equipment--and, being a bit of an actor, he was preoccupied by questions of authenticity, as truly authentic people seldom are. But under the posturing agonies about authenticity there was something better than authentic: there was something genuine. He was genuinely poetic. Being that, he could apply two tests simultaneously to his own language: the test of expressiveness, and the test of truth to life. To put it another way, he couldn't not apply them.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“The driving force of any ideology stands revealed: it can’t be coherent without being intolerant.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“As the late Edward W Said wrote after the attack on the World Trade Center, ‘Western humanism is not enough: we need a universal humanism.’ I agree with that. The question is how to get it, and my own view is that it can’t be had unless we raise our demands on ourselves a long way beyond decorating our lives with enough cultivation to make the pursuit of ambition look civilized.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“bohemian’s ability not to worry about money always starts with your money rather than his.)”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“And above all, I am not interested enough in politics to let them encumber my last days. —DRIEU LA ROCHELLE,”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“There are no genres, there are only talents. —JEAN-FRANÇOIS REVEL, LE VOLEUR DANS LA MAISON VIDE, P. 311”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Ideology functions as a machine to destroy information, even at the price of making assertions in clear contradiction of the evidence. —JEAN-FRANÇOIS REVEL,”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Luxury is a necessity that starts where necessity stops. —COCO CHANEL (ATTRIB.):”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Man and Superman: “the audience gets an exhausting idea of the inexhaustibility of the subject, and is bored brilliantly.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“It would be a desirable and enviable existence just to earn a decent wage at a worthwhile job and spend all one’s leisure hours improving one’s aesthetic appreciation. There is so much to appreciate, and it is all available for peanuts. One can plausibly aspire to seeing, hearing and reading everything that matters.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“the liberal believes in the permanence of humanity’s imperfection, he resigns himself to a regime in which the good will be the result of numberless actions, and never the object of a conscious choice. Finally, he suscribes to the pessimism that sees, in politics, the art of creating the conditions in which the vices of men will contribute to the good of the state. —RAYMOND ARON, L’OPIUM”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“A man who wants to find out who he really is should try watching the woman he loves as she dances the tango with a maestro.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“But caveat lector: life is waiting, and to read about someone who writes about life is getting far from it. Reading Schopenhauer when he tells you to watch out for reading too many books is already getting far from it, and at this moment you are reading someone who is telling you about how Schopenhauer said that you should not let reading come between you and life. In philosophy, the infinite regress is a sign that someone has made a mistake in logic. In ordinary life, it is a sign that someone is hiding from reality.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“if you are vulnerable economically, you are vulnerable all along the line.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“A LL THE ENTRIES in Freud’s diary of his last decade are short. Very few are more than one line long.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Tom Stoppard was refreshingly candid when, after the successful premiere of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, he was asked what the play was about: “It’s about to make me a lot of money.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Tyrants conduct monologues above a million solitudes. —ALBERT CAMUS, THE REBEL”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Why should I waste my imagination on myself? —SERGEI DIAGHILEV”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Stefan George: “He looks like an old woman who looks like an old man.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“have been at a great feast of languages,” says Moth, “and stolen the scraps.”)”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“We shouldn’t call a critic a murderer just because it is his duty to sign death certificates. —MARCEL REICH-RANICKI, DIE ANWALTE DER LITERATUR,”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Peacock in real life undid Shelley’s vegetarianism by waving a steak under his nose when he fainted,”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“In Sartre’s style of argument, German metaphysics met French sophistry in a kind of European Coal and Steel Community producing nothing but rhetorical gas.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“How well he’s read, to reason against reading!”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“Schopenhauer extended the same idea by favouring real observation over erudition, and stated confidently that the second sapped the first.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“To die guessing that you will be forgotten is one thing. But what would it be like to know that you have been forgotten before you die?”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

“He has always held to the principle (which was also favoured by Stefan Zweig) that great artists are disqualified from being objective critics, because they are always thinking of how they would have done it.”
― Clive James, quote from Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts

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Popular quotes

“After dinner or lunch or whatever it was -- with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what -- I said, "Look, baby, I'm sorry, but don't you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let's give it up. Let's just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let's go to the zoo. Let's look at animals. Let's drive down and look at the ocean. It's only 45 minutes. Let's play games in the arcades. Let's go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let's have friends. Let's laugh. This kind of life like everybody else's kind of life: it's killing us.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Post Office

“Saying goodbye to everyone, I picked up my bag and began walking away as a deep husky voice called my name. I didn’t stop walking, but looked over my shoulder in time to see Brandon walking around the table toward me, and Chase holding the brunette’s head away from his as he watched us, she just continued onto his neck. Falling into step with me, he held out a hand, “We haven’t met yet, I’m Brandon Taylor.” Dear Lord that voice could warm me on the coldest day of the year. “Harper Jackson, nice to meet you.” He smiled as he held the door open for me, “You too. You seem to know the rest of the guys pretty well though we’re just meeting, they said you’re Bree’s roommate?” “Uh, yeah. I am, but I don’t really know them well. I’ve only talked to them for a total of about ten minutes before today.” “Really?” The corners of his mouth twitched up, “You seem to make quite an impression in a short amount of time then.” “Oh I definitely made an impression with them.” I muttered. He looked at me quizzically but I shook my head so he wouldn’t push it. We stopped walking when we got to the path that would take me to the dorms and him to his next class. I turned towards him and shamelessly took in his worn jeans resting low on his narrow hips and fitted black shirt before going back to his face. I hadn’t realized how tall he was when we were walking out, but he had to be at least a foot taller than me. His height and muscled body made me want to curl up in his arms, it looked like I’d fit perfectly there. I nervously bit my bottom lip while I watched his cloudy eyes slowly take in my small frame. It didn’t feel like the guys at the party, looking at me like I was something to eat. His eyes made me feel beautiful, and it thrilled me that they were on me. Thrilled me that they were on me? Get a grip Harper you just met him two seconds ago. “Come on PG, let’s go.” Chase grabbed my arm and started dragging me away. “Chase! Stop!” I yanked my arm out and shot him a dirty look. “What is your problem?” “I’m taking you and Bree to the house, and you need to pack for the weekend so let’s go.” He grabbed for me again but I dodged his hand. “The weekend, what?” “You’re staying with me, go pack.” I narrowed my eyes and started to turn towards Brandon, “Fine, hold on.” “Harper.” “Go away Chase, I’ll meet you in the room in a minute. Go find Bree.” He moved to stand closer behind me so I just sighed and gave Brandon a lame smile. “Sorry, apparently I have to go. I’ll see you tonight?” I don’t know why I asked, he actually lived there. A sexy smile lit up his face as his hand reached out to quickly brush against my arm, “See you then.” With a hard nod directed towards Chase, he turned and walked away. I”
― Molly McAdams, quote from Taking Chances

“Where there is great love there are always miracles,” he said at length. “One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”
― Willa Cather, quote from Death Comes for the Archbishop

“I’m attracting small children,” Orma muttered, twisting his hat in his hands. “Shoo it away, will you?”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina

“То, чего не можешь заполучить, всегда кажется лучше того, что имеешь. В этом и состоит романтика и идиотизм человеческой жизни.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from The Black Obelisk

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