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.

Success is good for the character.

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

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

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

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.

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.

Loyalty to the school to which your parents pay to send you seemed to me like feeling loyalty to Selfridges.

Rumpole, you must move with the times." "If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.