116 Quotes by John Mortimer

Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests.Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous.

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.

She felt a tightness in her chest and sent for Dr Simcox.'What's the trouble?''Look out there, that's the trouble! It's so green and quiet and it's always bloody raining.''That's England, Mrs Mallard-Greene. I'm afraid there's no known cure for it.

Take sex, for instance.''What do you want me to do with it?''Try to be serious for a moment. Take the sex life of our father.'[...]Even after a couple of brandies he felt extremely reluctant to discuss sex and his father. 'It's something I'd rather not think about,' he said. 'We all come into existence as a result of a momentary embrace by our parents which find impossible to imagine. [...] We all assume we're the result of our own particular immaculate conception.

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.

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.

The first sight of the Rapstone Valley is of something unexpectedly isolated and uninterruptedly rural; a solitary jogger is the only outward sign of urban pollution.

She believed that, in an ideal world, the working class would rule the country, but she had no particular desire to ask any of them to tea.

Oh, you think everyone's interesting. That's because you're a Red. I don't. I believe that quite a lot of people were just manufactured when God was thinking of something else.