A biography for Clive Sinclairhasn’t been written yet.
“I owe my discovery of the Hot Club of Cowtown to Kinky Friedman, leader of the Texas Jewboys. When I saw that Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys were headlining the 2003 Santa Clarita Cowboy Poetry and Music Festival, I thought it my duty to check out the band that had inspired the Texas Jewboys.”
“For me, Jews and football go together like a horse and carriage.”
“The summer of 1976 was so hot that bars of chocolate melted on the shelves before confectioners could sell them.”
“Copywriting cuts the communication cord between word and feeling. By offering instant gratification, it atrophies more subtle emotions.”
“As I was writing, I realised I wasn't sufficiently extrovert to gather enough interesting souls with tall tales around me. I was no Louis Theroux. But neither was I interested in exploring my inner life in public, in the manner of a Jonathan Raban.”
“I had a Latin master who, for no rational reason whatsoever - I was a very quiet kid at school - just hated me.”
“I still see the world as a place of bitter irony and black humour, failed hopes, dashed plans. I hope to make my work sparer, to outgrow my desire to show off.”
“McCarthy's prose in 'Blood Meridian' comes blazing from the Book of Revelation.”
“My history was the Western. I grew up with the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid and Bonanza. I felt as much a child of the West as someone born in Montana or Wyoming.”
“One-eyed Reuben 'Rooster' Cogburn is the role that finally delivered John Wayne his Oscar.”
“Of course the 19th century remained in blissful ignorance of post-modern irony, and the dime novels were made without end.”
“Ambassadors are, by definition, foreign bodies.”
“In 1935, Faber & Faber published an anthology entitled 'My Best Western Story' in which the genre's leading practitioners contributed what they considered their finest. Alas, literature the stories ain't; they appear more like fossils from a spent mine.”
“Back when I was young, lists seemed like fences on the open range. But secretly, I was pleased to be corralled among other literary thoroughbreds.”
“Hinde Esther Singer was born in Poland on March 31, 1881, the daughter of Bathsheva and Pinchos Mendel Singer. Bathsheva was an intellectual, but both Bathsheva's father and her husband disapproved of erudite women.”
“If someone like my father chooses to criticise Israeli policies, it's not because he is a self-hating Jew, but because he is not prepared to live in a state of self-denial.”
“Even when she was alive, Esther Kreitman's novels, short stories and translations received far less attention than the work of her famous brothers, I. J. and Isaac Bashevis Singer.”
“Back in 1948, a monomaniac called Korczak resolved to impose Crazy Horse's likeness upon a mountain. It took 50 years to complete the head, which measures 90ft from crown to chin. By comparison, the four presidents at Mt Rushmore seem modest.”
“As Annie Proulx is to Wyoming, so is Jane Candia Coleman to Arizona.”
“You have to turn a blind eye to politics in nearly all Westerns.”