No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
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.
There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.
There are lots of similarities between being a writer and a lawyer: to tell a story to a jury, hold their attention, make them laugh, make them like you. But what makes being a barrister less satisfying than being a writer is, finally, that it's about what someone else wants you to say.
The freedom to make a fortune on the stock exchange has been made to sound more alluring than freedom of speech.
To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.
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.
It's barrister behaviour to say what you think will appeal to the person you're talking to, whoever it happens to be, whether it's true or not.
The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over, and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous.
Knowing the law is not much help for an advocate. In fact, it's a bit of a disadvantage, cramps your style.
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 I don't know that I could bring myself to vote Tory.
All the flower children were as alike as a congress of accountants and about as interesting.
The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.
The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.
I try and treat my children from the age of ten months as if they were totally grown up, which I think is the only way to treat children.
One thing my father said was that if you find yourself in a country where you have to carry papers, you know it has a lousy government.
My father was the doyen of the divorce barristers. He was an extremely erudite and very famous divorce barrister. So that, when I was a little boy in the nursery, instead of a story like 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' I used to get 'The Duchess and the Seven Correspondents.'
The hardest thing is to write a play, because you have to hold their attention for two hours, and if you let them go for five minutes, they're gone for good.
There is always time for failure.
Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.
