116 Quotes by John Mortimer

My father was the doyen of the divorce barristers. He was an extremely erudite and very famous divorce barrister. So that, when I was a little boy in the nursery, instead of a story like 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' I used to get 'The Duchess and the Seven Correspondents.'

I try and treat my children from the age of ten months as if they were totally grown up, which I think is the only way to treat children.

There are lots of similarities between being a writer and a lawyer: to tell a story to a jury, hold their attention, make them laugh, make them like you. But what makes being a barrister less satisfying than being a writer is, finally, that it's about what someone else wants you to say.

The hardest thing is to write a play, because you have to hold their attention for two hours, and if you let them go for five minutes, they're gone for good.

Voting Liberal is a non-thing. Historically, it might be a good idea to have a Conservative government, because change is a good thing. But I don't know that I could bring myself to vote Tory.

If you're an actor, you get your eyes put out; you get everything done to you.

It's barrister behaviour to say what you think will appeal to the person you're talking to, whoever it happens to be, whether it's true or not.

I think being dead isn't any problem. It's the process of dying which is quite off-putting.