I was born in 1939. The other big event of that year was the outbreak of the Second World War, but for the moment that did not affect me. - Clive James

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.

The answer to the nagging conundrum of how a civilized country like Germany could produce the Holocaust is that Germany ceased to be civilized from the moment Hitler came to power.

All I can do is turn a phrase until it catches the light. There was a time when I got hot under the collar if the critics said I had nothing new to say. Now I realise that they had a point. My field is the self-evident. Everything I say is obvious, although I like to think that some of the obvious things I have said were not so obvious until I said them.