My wife spoke perfect Italian and she was very beautiful and very suave Italian men were crowding around her, talking all the time and if I was to even understand what was going on, I had to learn the language fast.
Clive JamesThe rattle of plastic keys reminds me of a squadron of butterflies failing to fight their way out of a paper bag.
Clive JamesA traditional fixture at Wimbledon is the way the BBC TV commentary box fills up with British players eliminated in the early rounds.
Clive JamesShe [Marilyn Monroe] was good at being inarticulately abstracted for the same reason that midgets are good at being short.
Clive JamesSpending all my remaining money on a ticket to Florence was rendered needlessly complicated by the fact that none of the ticket-sellers had ever heard of the place. At last their supervisor showed up and set them straight by informing them that the city they had always referred to as 'Firenze' was in reality called Florence.
Clive James