From The Guardian's interview with Clive James:
"As the great philosopher Martina Navratilova once said, it doesn't really matter how well you're playing when you're playing well, what matters is how well you're playing when you're playing badly. You've got to have a standard you can hit. The real fun starts when you get above that - but that's beyond your control. Still is. And I've been doing this a long, long time."
James's writing career began in earnest in 1972 as a television critic for the Observer, where he says he soon became unpopular for writing his reviews at great pace in an open-plan office, laughing out loud at his own jokes. Has it got easier or harder over the years? "Well, Thomas Mann, he said - and this is great, this is writing - he said a writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people. That line is perfect in every way. Not only is it perfectly written, but it's absolutely true."
