Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC (21 April 1923 – 16 January 2009) was an English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter, and author.
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?
We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.
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.
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 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.
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.
The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.
Never shake hands with colleagues in court; the customers think you're making deals.
Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.
Rumpole, you must move with the times. " "If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.
The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yoghurt.
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.
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.
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.
Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied.
I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.
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.
Success is good for the character.
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.
The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.