Alfie Dawlish. Invented all sorts of imaginary ailments…

“Take sex, for instance.' 'What do you want me to do with it?' 'Try to be serious for a moment. Take the sex life…

— John Mortimer

I knew nothing about farce until I read Puce a l'Oreille, and had no idea what a deadly serious business it is.

— John Mortimer

Do we want blanks, asterisks and exclamation marks which people can fill in with their own imaginations, or are we prepared and strong enough…

— John Mortimer

Voting Liberal is a non-thing. Historically, it might be a good idea to have a Conservative government, because change is a good thing. But…

— John Mortimer

“I sent out words like soldiers to battle and they never returned.”

— John Mortimer

Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The ageing process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs…

— John Mortimer

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

— John Mortimer

The people look forbidding, solemn, marked by that impossible ideal, Communism, which, like Christianity, seemed to demand too much of humanity and, falling into…

— John Mortimer

There is always time for failure

— John Mortimer

Irritable Judges suffer from a bad case of premature adjudication.

— John Mortimer

I try and treat my children from the age of ten months as if they were totally grown up, which I think is the…

— John Mortimer

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…

— John Mortimer

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.

— John Mortimer

“The main aim of education should be to send children out into the world with a reasonably sized anthology in their heads so that,…

— John Mortimer

On the three pigs he and his wife own: "We acquired the pigs last year. My wife was born on a pig farm and…

— John Mortimer