# Quote — Clive James, North Face of Soho

> Martin, rather than step into the spotlight, would prefer to die in an unarmed attack on the power station supplying its electric current. His genuine modesty is the main reason for the fateful discrepancy between him and the journalistic literary sexton beetles who make copy out of him: they would like to receive the degree of attention that he would like to avoid, and the clearer it becomes that he would like to avoid it, the more they resent him for failing to appreciate their generosity.

- 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)
- Page: 205
- 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/martin-rather-than

## 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)