John Mortimer Quotes

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.

magic fear writers feel laws censorship print dread lawandlawyers

No brilliance is required in law, just common sense and relatively clean fingernails.

clean sense law common commonsense

There is always time for failure.

failure thetimes time

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.

funny humour

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.

parents sex

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.

problems

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.

city countryside

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.

trouble people