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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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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
Called
Flaw
Looking
Irritating
Father
Inherited
Art
Advocate
Flaws
Luck
Argument
Habit

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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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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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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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All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.
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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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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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To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.
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Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.
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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 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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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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Success is good for the character.
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Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
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It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.
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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.
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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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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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