116 Quotes by John Mortimer

I found criminal clients easy and matrimonial clients hard. Matrimonial clients hate each other so much and use their children to hurt each other in beastly ways. Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.

Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The ageing 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.