Clive Barnes

I would rather have been beaten up in the media than live a life that wasn’t happy.

The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.

My people keep telling me I shouldn’t write letters like this to critics. The way I see it, critics get to say what they want to about my work, so why shouldn’t I be able to say what I want to about theirs?

The media is really, the word, I think one of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is fake. I guess other people have used it perhaps over the years, but I’ve never noticed it.

It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

There’s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?

I think the 24-hour news cycle has helped exaggerate the differences between the parties. You can always find someone on TV somewhere carping about something. That didn’t happen 20 years ago.

With the press there is no ‘off the record’.

People at Facebook are fairly used to the press being nice to us or not nice to us.

One of the more radical and interesting possible ways to limit the power of unaccountable media barons is to give journalists the power to elect editors and have seats on boards for workers and consumers when a title or programme gets particularly large and influential.

I can understand the British media and why they are doing that. It does not add up to much. I’m used in my life to not paying much attention to some things.

My Twitter has become so powerful that I can actually make my enemies tell the truth.

You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.

[The New York Times] don’t write good. They have people over there, like Maggie Haberman and others, they don’t – they don’t write good. They don’t know how to write good.

If you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.