Quotes from John Mortimer

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

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.

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

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

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

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

The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they're not going to succeed, saying: There is life, but it's not for you.

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

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

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.

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

I think being dead isn't any problem. It's the process of dying which is quite off-putting.

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.

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.

There is always time for failure

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.