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What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own.

John Mortimer

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John Mortimer
Age: 85 †
Born: 1923
Born: April 21
Died: 2009
Died: January 16
Barrister
Novelist
Poet Lawyer
Screenwriter
Writer
Hampstead Village
Sir John Clifford Mortimer
Sir John Mortimer
John Clifford Mortimer
Starting
Writer
Voice
Work
Obsesses
Stricken
Panic
Search
Lifetime

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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.
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Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied.
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Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.
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The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.
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Like childhood, old age is irresponsible, reckless, and foolhardy. Children and old people have everything to gain and nothing much to lose. It's middle-age which is cursed by the desperate need to cling to some finger-hold halfway up the mountain, to conform, not to cause trouble, to behave well.
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There's more of yourself in a book than a play. that's why we know all about Dickens and not much about Shakespeare. Ben Jonson murdered people Marlowe was a spy Shakespeare just sat in the corner and took notes.
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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.
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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.
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All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.
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We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.
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I don't think you ever feel a success really because everything could always be done better than you've done it.
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I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth foregoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.
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Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
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The people look forbidding, solemn, marked by that impossible ideal, Communism, which, like Christianity, seemed to demand too much of humanity and, falling into the wrong hands, led too easily to horrible brutality.
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I knew nothing about farce until I read Puce a l'Oreille, and had no idea what a deadly serious business it is.
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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'.
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There is always time for failure
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Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.
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To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.
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It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.
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