Clive James Quotes

I have no business carrying myself like some diva.

When you're young, you kind of take yourself seriously, and you think, like, "People need to see what I can do." And it's so laughable, especially with actors.

If only loud people were even half as interesting as they think they are.

If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

Clearly I've got an ego.

I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.

I don't talk about myself in the third person, and I laugh at people who do.

I don't want to go around like some kind of bleeding giant or whatever, or thinking I'm a big deal, because it doesn't help you do your work. I think people like Hemingway got into an awful lot of trouble that way.

I thought I was a god. I was more important than you, because I could do this thing where I played a silly sport that made me a better human being, in my eyes.

I think your ego gets in the way of making something good because it kind of blinds you from the actual art.

I think if you feel weird and self-conscious about that kind of stuff - which happened to me at some points - that means your ego is really kicking in. You can understand how people get to be assholes in music business because it's like you're getting pumped full of your own thing so much, you get ungrounded. That's a dangerous place to be.

If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.

If I started thinking too much about how influential I've been, then I'd be more of a turd than I already am.

When they get their ego involved, people do things they shouldn't do.

A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first; and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.

When you have any kind of success in life, that's like the most dangerous moment that you're in because you're going to tend to think wow, I can just keep repeating what I've done. I'm a great person. People love me. All of the sudden they're giving me all of this attention. You get drunk on it and you lose your sense of balance and your sense of detachment. I know it's happened to me.

After Stand By Me came out, people were telling me, 'You're so good,' 'You're going to be a star,' and things like that. You can't think about it. If you take it the wrong way, you can really get high on yourself. People get so lost when that happens to them. They may think they have everything under control, but everything is really out of control. Their lives are totally in pieces.

Mastery is often taken for egotism.

Whenever you think that you are getting too big for the people around you, remember all that separates you from the guy sitting next to you is a little piece of gristle in your throat.

Thinking that your story is so interesting that other people will want to listen to it or read it or pay to hear it, that's - what kind of person thinks that? A monster of self-regard. It's not normal thinking.

Obviously, the arrogance of my own nature in regards to other people's work would suggest that I think I'm talented.

George Clooney likes to talk about himself in the third person mostly. He's always enjoyed it. Listen, I don't like to think in those terms, where you just have to completely separate yourself one from the other.

When you begin to believe you have license because you are a special person breathing special oxygen, that's when you're in big trouble. That's the road to insanity. And a lot of people in the studios are like that. They believe that they are special. I do think actors are blessed, or cursed, with maybe a slightly heightened awareness, which you have to use.

I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.

↑ top up position down The fact that I suspect I'm an asshole means I probably am not, because a real asshole doesn't think he's an asshole, does he? Therefore, by realizing that I'm an asshole, I am in fact negating that very realization, am I not? Descartes's Asshole Axiom: I think I am; therefor I'm not one.