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.

Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.

There is always time for failure

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

The old middle-class prerogative of being permanently in a most filthy temper.

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'.

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