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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.

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
Serious
Knew
Read
Funny
Idea
Business
Farce
Ideas
Deadly
Nothing
Humor

More quotes by John Mortimer

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There's more of yourself in a book than a play. that's why we know all about Dickens and not much about Shakespeare. Ben Jonson murdered people Marlowe was a spy Shakespeare just sat in the corner and took notes.
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.
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.
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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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
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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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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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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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I don't think you ever feel a success really because everything could always be done better than you've done it.
John Mortimer
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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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The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.
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
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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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It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.
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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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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Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.
John Mortimer
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Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
John Mortimer
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There is always time for failure
John Mortimer