# Quote — Clive James, North Face of Soho

> He had a conspicuous individual talent, but it was interpretive, not directly creative. He could never have emulated Chaplin, Keaton or Jacques Tati and set up a whole project by himself, controlling its every detail even if the task took years. But there is no point carping. He had such a protean capacity that it would have been a miracle if he had been in full command of it.

- Author: [Clive James](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james.md)
- Book: [North Face of Soho](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james/north-face-of-soho.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Clive_James#North_Face_of_Soho_(2006)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james/north-face-of-soho/he-had-a-conspicuous

## More from this book

> I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates... Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.

p. 127 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james/north-face-of-soho/i-was-wrong.md)

> I should say in haste that his early poetry gave him the right to think of himself as a giant. But he was also a nutter, one of the manic-depressive type who, when in a downhill phase, accuse themselves loudly of being Hitler. (They never accuse themselves of being the seventh anonymous stormtrooper from the right at a dedication ceremony for the new blood banner in a provincial town twenty miles from Dortmund: they always accuse themselves of being Hitler, just as the people who had previous lives in ancient Egypt always turn out to have been pharaohs or chief priests, and never night-shift workers on the crew that put up the third tallest obelisk in one of the satellite temples at Karnak).

p. 181 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james/north-face-of-soho/i-should-say.md)

> If it feels like a mistake before you go in, don't go in.

p. 166 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/clive-james/north-face-of-soho/if-it-feels.md)