John Mortimer Quotes

There is always time for failure

To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yoghurt.

All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.

No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.

Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied.

We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol.

The secret of good health and happiness is to have rather small illnesses throughout your life which you can rely on to stop you doing anything you don't want to do.

Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.

I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.

I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth foregoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.

The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.

A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.

The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they're not going to succeed, saying: There is life, but it's not for you.

The freedom to make a fortune on the stock exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech.

Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.

Rumpole, you must move with the times." "If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.

Check-ups are, in my experience, a grave mistake; all they do is allow the quack of your choice to tell you that you have some sort of complaint that you were far happier not knowing about.

Loyalty to the school to which your parents pay to send you seemed to me like feeling loyalty to Selfridges.

The law seems like a sort of maze through which a client must be led to safety, a collection of reefs, rocks, and underwater hazards through which he or she must be piloted.

What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own.

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.

I knew nothing about farce until I read Puce a l'Oreille, and had no idea what a deadly serious business it is.

I don't believe in children's books. I think after you've read Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and Huckleberry Finn, you're ready for anything.

No power on earth, however, can abolish the merciless class distinction between those who are physically desirable and the lonely, pallid, spotted, silent, unfancied majority.

The greatest horrors of our world are committed by people who are totally sincere.

I suppose true sexual equality will come when a general called Anthea is found having an unwise lunch with a young, unreliable model from Spain.

Irritable Judges suffer from a bad case of premature adjudication.

The old middle-class prerogative of being permanently in a most filthy temper.

The officers of the branch of the Force (the Obscene Publications Squad) have a discouraging club tie, on which a book is depicted being cut in half by a larger pair of scissors.

I don't think you ever feel a success really because everything could always be done better than you've done it.

Never shake hands with colleagues in court; the customers think you're making deals.

The individual who is best prepared for any occupation is the one able to adapt himself to any situation.

Success is good for the character.

We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.

It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.

My father, to whom I owe so much, never told me the difference between right and wrong; now I think that's why I remain so greatly in his debt.

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

People will go to endless trouble to divorce one person and then marry someone who is exactly the same, except probably a bit poorer and a bit nastier. I don't think anybody learns anything.

The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.

lIf someone tries to steal your watch, by all means fight them off. If someone sues you for your watch, hand it over and be glad you got away so lightly.

I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.

A hundred pounds! He couldn't remember ever having seen a hundred pounds, all at one time. He found himself envying his father, who had nothing to worry about except the future of mankind.