John Mortimer's Quotes

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.

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

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

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

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

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.

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

The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.

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

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

There is always time for failure.

There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.

Stories about Diana's fashions, about possible rows between Charles and Diana, these were meat and drink.

They defined what was private and what was public and they would move it whenever they wished.

For a time during the 1980s the Royal Family were not just the most influential family in Britain but probably in Europe and Prince Charles specifically was very much like a defacto Cabinet member and what he said actually had impact on public policy.

He's a TV producer, a theatrical impresario, and he wants to be treated as Mr. Windsor but when the going gets rough he wants to be treated like a member of the Royal Family.

I would argue that television and particularly the BBC were instrumental in puffing up the Royal Family to a level where they were inflated out of all, all proportion to their relevance on the national scene.