John Mortimer
John Mortimer
Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was an English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter, and author...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 April 1923
rocks law safety
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.
father wife house
When... I told my father I wanted to be a writer, he had asked me to consider my unfortunate wife, who would have me about the house all day 'wearing a dressing gown, brewing tea and stumped for words'.
lunch spain found
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.
our-world people horror
The greatest horrors of our world are committed by people who are totally sincere.
hell where-you-are agree
Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.
education children thinking
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.
mistake knowing choices
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.
father thinking differences
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.
freedom-of-speech sound economics
The freedom to make a fortune on the stock exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech.
years lunch pigs
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.
moving way accompany
Rumpole, you must move with the times." "If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.
beauty lonely class
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.
class luck middle
The old middle-class prerogative of being permanently in a most filthy temper.
theatre tragedy revolution
Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.