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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.

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
Persons
Usually
Murderers
Person
Ways
Agreeable
Hard
Hurt
Murderer
Children
Quite
Clients
Much
Use
Criminal
Way
Hate
Criminals
Matrimonial
World
Easy
Killed
Bugging
Found
Peaceful
Beastly

More quotes by 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.
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Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
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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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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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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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All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.
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There is always time for failure
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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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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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Success is good for the character.
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The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.
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A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.
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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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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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It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.
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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 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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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 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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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.
John Mortimer