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
children people childhood
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....
children believe book
I don't believe in children's books. I think after you've read Kidnapped, Treasure Island, and Huckleberry Finn, you're ready for anything.
rocks law safety
The law seems like a sort of maze through which a client must be led to safety, a collection of reefs, rocks, and underwater hazards through which he or she must be piloted.
may belief significant
The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.
children flower aggravation
All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.
lunch spain found
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.
our-world people horror
The greatest horrors of our world are committed by people who are totally sincere.
father wife house
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'.
hell where-you-are agree
Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.
book cutting squad
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.
divorce thinking people
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.
strong exclamation-marks imagination
Do we want blanks, asterisks and exclamation marks which people can fill in with their own imaginations, or are we prepared and strong enough to tolerate, even if we do not approve, the strong Anglo-Saxon, realistic and vivid language?
education children thinking
The main aim of education should be to send children out into the world with a reasonably sized anthology in their heads so that, while seated on the lavatory, waiting in doctors' surgeries, on stationary trains or watching interviews with politicians, they may have something interesting to think about.
peaceful world murderer
Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.