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

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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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It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.
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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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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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The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.
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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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Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
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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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No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
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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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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 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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There is always time for failure
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Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.
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Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.
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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 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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