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

Irritable Judges suffer from a bad case of premature adjudication.

I found criminal clients easy and matrimonial clients hard. Matrimonial clients hate each other so much and use their children to hurt each other in beastly ways. Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.

My father, to whom I owe so much, never told me the difference between right and wrong; now I think that's why I remain so greatly in his debt.

Like childhood, old age is irresponsible, reckless, and foolhardy. Children and old people have everything to gain and nothing much to lose. It's middle-age which is cursed by the desperate need to cling to some finger-hold halfway up the mountain, to conform, not to cause trouble, to behave well.

When... I told my father I wanted to be a writer, he had asked me to consider my unfortunate wife, who would have me about the house all day 'wearing a dressing gown, brewing tea and stumped for words'.

Never shake hands with colleagues in court; the customers think you're making deals.