John Mortimer
John Mortimer
Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was an English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter, and author...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 April 1923
thinking hands lawyer
Never shake hands with colleagues in court; the customers think you're making deals.
writing yogurt milk
The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yoghurt.
fall hands people
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.
hurt children hate
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.
running laughing dying
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.
mistake knowing choices
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.
alcohol humans knows
We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol.
writing important remember
It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.
class luck middle
The old middle-class prerogative of being permanently in a most filthy temper.
art father luck
I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.
law magic way
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.
america scum may
We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.
lonely growing-up father
I'd been told of all the things you're meant to feel when your father dies. Sudden freedom, growing up, the end of dependence, the step into the sunlight when no one is taller than you and you're in no one's shadow. I know what I felt. Lonely.
funny-marriage guilty pleading
Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.