John Mortimer Quotes - Page 2

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Irritable Judges suffer from a bad case of premature adjudication.

On the three pigs he and his wife own: "We acquired the pigs last year. My wife was born on a pig farm and has always been very fond of pigs. Of course, they are for eating, which is why they are named Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. You wouldn’t want to eat Rufus, Marcus and Esmeralda.

Success is good for the character.

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.

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

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

Do we want blanks, asterisks and exclamation marks which people can fill in with their own imaginations, or are we prepared and strong enough to tolerate, even if we do not approve, the strong Anglo-Saxon, realistic and vivid language?

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

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.

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

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

I'd been told of all the things you're meant to feel when your father dies. Sudden freedom, growing up, the end of dependence, the step into the sunlight when no one is taller than you and you're in no one's shadow. I know what I felt. Lonely.

The main aim of education should be to send children out into the world with a reasonably sized anthology in their heads so that, while seated on the lavatory, waiting in doctors' surgeries, on stationary trains or watching interviews with politicians, they may have something interesting to think about.

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

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.

There's more of yourself in a book than a play. that's why we know all about Dickens and not much about Shakespeare. Ben Jonson murdered people; Marlowe was a spy; Shakespeare just sat in the corner and took notes.

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.