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

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
Validity
Bore
Bores
Rule
Found
Writing

More quotes by John Mortimer

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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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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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People will go to endless trouble to divorce one person and then marry someone who is exactly the same, except probably a bit poorer and a bit nastier. I don't think anybody learns anything.
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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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Success is good for the character.
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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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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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Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.
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No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
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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.
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I suppose true sexual equality will come when a general called Anthea is found having an unwise lunch with a young, unreliable model from Spain.
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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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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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A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.
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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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All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.
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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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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.
John Mortimer
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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.
John Mortimer