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.

Rumpole, you must move with the times." "If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.

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.

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.

We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.

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