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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.

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
People
Trouble
Learns
Probably
Marry
Someone
Divorce
Anything
Endless
Persons
Exactly
Person
Except
Think
Anybody
Nastier
Thinking
Bits
Poorer

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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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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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All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.
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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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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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We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.
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A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.
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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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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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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 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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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 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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The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.
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Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
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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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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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No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
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It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.
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