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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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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
Important
Writing
Desperately
Finished
Scene
Remember
Enough

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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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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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To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.
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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.
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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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Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
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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 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 found criminal clients easy and matrimonial clients hard. Matrimonial clients hate each other so much and use their children to hurt each other in beastly ways. Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.
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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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There is always time for failure
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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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No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
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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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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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The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.
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Success is good for the character.
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