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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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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
Words
Tea
Father
Unfortunate
House
Wearing
Stumped
Wanted
Consider
Brewing
Would
Asked
Gown
Writer
Gowns
Told
Dressings
Wife
Dressing

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Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.
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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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It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.
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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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Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied.
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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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All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.
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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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Success is good for the character.
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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 only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.
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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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Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
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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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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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No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
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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.
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