Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Mortimer Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 58 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by John Mortimer.

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Famous Quotes By John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1939274

Sport, as I have discovered, fosters international hostility and leads the audience, no doubt from boredom, to assault and do grievous bodily harm while watching it. The fact that audiences at the National Theatre rarely break bottles over one another's heads, and that Opera fans seldom knee one another in the groin during the long intervals at Covent Garden, convinces me that theatre is safer than sport. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2147842

A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2177216

The only rule I have found to have any validity is writing is not to bore yourself. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 970479

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1104765

He's a cabinet minister and his mother was a cook. My father was a doctor and I'm a cook. Perhaps I passed him on the way down, or did he pass me on the way up? — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 421671

Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 625843

Take sex, for instance.'
'What do you want me to do with it?'
'Try to be serious for a moment. Take the sex life of our father.'
[ ... ]
Even after a couple of brandies he felt extremely reluctant to discuss sex and his father. 'It's something I'd rather not think about,' he said. 'We all come into existence as a result of a momentary embrace by our parents which find impossible to imagine. [ ... ] We all assume we're the result of our own particular immaculate conception. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 991380

No power on earth, however, can abolish the merciless class distinction between those who are physically desirable and the lonely, pallid, spotted, silent, unfancied majority. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2086633

Oh, you think everyone's interesting. That's because you're a Red. I don't. I believe that quite a lot of people were just manufactured when God was thinking of something else. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 431825

Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1730144

Loyalty to the school to which your parents pay to send you seemed to me like feeling loyalty to Selfridges. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1285784

Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1346205

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. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1264487

She believed that, in an ideal world, the working class would rule the country, but she had no particular desire to ask any of them to tea. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1353285

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? — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1245261

She felt a tightness in her chest and sent for Dr Simcox.
'What's the trouble?'
'Look out there, that's the trouble! It's so green and quiet and it's always bloody raining.'
'That's England, Mrs Mallard-Greene. I'm afraid there's no known cure for it. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1228425

A hundred pounds! He couldn't remember ever having seen a hundred pounds, all at one time. He found himself envying his father, who had nothing to worry about except the future of mankind. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1561762

Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests.
Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging 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

John Mortimer Quotes 1589886

It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1890418

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. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1765938

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

John Mortimer Quotes 1802549

My customary exercise consists of a short stroll from the Temple tube to Equity Court, and rising to object to impertinent questions put by prosecuting counsel. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1837997

The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they're not going to succeed. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2241821

I don't think you ever feel a success really because everything could always be done better than you've done it ... — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2030834

I sent out words like soldiers to battle and they never returned. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2083337

Dr Rahmat thrust his hand between her legs, tried to kiss her and suggested that there was time for a quick one.'

'Meaning sexual intercourse?' Sir Hector was clearly not about to take the view that my client was offering his patient a small sherry. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2097233

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. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2101363

LIf someone tries to steal your watch, by all means fight them off. If someone sues you for your watch, hand it over and be glad you got away so lightly. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2105535

Success is good for the character. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2112106

There is always time for failure. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 2143491

The first sight of the Rapstone Valley is of something unexpectedly isolated and uninterruptedly rural; a solitary jogger is the only outward sign of urban pollution. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 89696

Up the stairs I found an imposing headquarters, decorated with the portraits and busts of solemn, whiskered old darlings who, no doubt, bled their customers with leeches and passed on the information to alarmed small boys that self-abuse leads to blindness. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 708228

She who must be obeyed, by Horace Rumpole character — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 188417

The freedom to make a fortune on the stock exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 211310

The secret of good health and happiness is to have rather small illnesses throughout your life which you can rely on to stop you doing anything you don't want to do. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 293248

You can't change people. You know that. You can't make them stop hating each other, or longing to blow up the world, not by walking through the rain and singing to a small guitar. Most you can do for them is pull them out of the womb, thump them on the backside and let them get on with it. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 297745

All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 316804

To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 334976

In the middle of the swinging sixties people in England were apparently under some sort of obligation to have a good time and most of them didn't. A Russian and an American walked about in space to no one's particular advantage. The Beatles received their British Empire medals and, so it was said, smoked cannabis in the lavatories at Buckingham Palace. American aeroplanes were bombing Vietnam, but no one seemed to talk about the nuclear holocaust any more. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 488083

On the three pigs he and his wife own: We acquired the pigs last year. My wife was born on a pig farm and has always been very fond of pigs. Of course, they are for eating, which is why they are named Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. You wouldn't want to eat Rufus, Marcus and Esmeralda. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 495131

What on earth was Henry talking about?'
'His soul. I wonder where he keeps it. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 612176

I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 621063

We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 640729

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

John Mortimer Quotes 658420

He is a pale, long faced, unsmiling fellow who probably lives on a diet of organic bran and carrot juice. He heard Ballard open the proceedings against La Maison with a pained expression, and looked at me over his half-glasses as though I were a saucepan that hadn't been washed up properly. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1213046

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 doctor's surgeries, on stationary trains or watching interviews with politicians, they have something interesting to think about. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 732938

The greatest horrors of our world, from the executions in Iran to the brutalities of the IRA, are committed by people who are totally sincere — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 759130

Soapy Sam looked as though he had just sat down on a favourite armchair which had gone missing. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 780545

Alfie Dawlish. Invented all sorts of imaginary ailments for the family at the Manor so he could rob them and treat the village for nothing. It was his primitive version of the Health Service — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 862751

On the cover of this publication a bikini-clad young woman disported herself with a medicine ball, both articles looking as though they had been inflated with a bicycle pump. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 880870

The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 929853

The old middle-class prerogative of being permanently in a most filthy temper. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 975514

We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 988411

No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1005813

Rumpole, you must move with the times."
"If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1035519

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1141646

What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own. — John Mortimer

John Mortimer Quotes 1204064

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