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There is always time for failure

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
Time
Failure
Always

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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'.
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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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.
John Mortimer
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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.
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.
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No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
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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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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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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A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.
John Mortimer
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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 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 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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Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.
John Mortimer
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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.
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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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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We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.
John Mortimer
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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