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Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.

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
Like
Parole
Indefinite
Pleading
Sentence
Sentences
Guilty
Marriage
Without

More quotes by John Mortimer

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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.
John Mortimer
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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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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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What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own.
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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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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.
John Mortimer
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Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
John Mortimer
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It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.
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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.
John Mortimer
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Success is good for the character.
John Mortimer
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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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The officers of the branch of the Force (the Obscene Publications Squad) have a discouraging club tie, on which a book is depicted being cut in half by a larger pair of scissors.
John Mortimer
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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.
John Mortimer
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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.
John Mortimer
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Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.
John Mortimer
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To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.
John Mortimer
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Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied.
John Mortimer
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A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.
John Mortimer
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I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.
John Mortimer
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All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.
John Mortimer