A Voyage Round My Father (1982 TV Movie)

Laurence Olivier: Clifford Mortimer

Photos 

Quotes 

• Clifford Mortimer : This coffee's frozen, like a sort of Arctic mud.

• John Mortimer : Don't be angry.

  Clifford Mortimer : I'm always angry! When I'm dying...

• Clifford Mortimer : If they ever give us another War, avoid the temptation to do anything Heroic! That's my advice to you.

• Clifford Mortimer : You're alone in this world, and there's nothing anyone can tell you about it!

  Sons as a Boy : Wah!

  Mother : Oh, never crying!

  Clifford Mortimer : Say "Rats!" It's impossible to cry if you say "Rats!", it's something to do with the muscles of the face.

  Sons as a Boy : [Walking to the car, off to boarding school]  Rats! Rats! Rrrrrats!

• Clifford Mortimer : Never let anyone deceive you into thinking that the world was created in six days. Six days labour wouldn't produce one primitive earthworm! The evolution of the horse was a most torturous process!

  [Shakes head] 

  Clifford Mortimer : So, none of this "six days" nonsense.

• Clifford Mortimer : [From the Fortress-Garden]  HAVEN'T THOSE VISITORS LEFT YET?

• Clifford Mortimer : [From bedroom]  My tie! Oh God, where's my tie? If only you knew the loneliness of getting dressed!

• Clifford Mortimer : When I rise to cross-question I will not be interrupted!

  Judge : Gentlemen, gentlemen, please! Now, what was your question?

  Clifford Mortimer : I have forgotten it. My learned friend's remark had the effect he no doubt intended and I have forgotten my question!

  Boustead : Sir, this is absurd!

  Clifford Mortimer : Wait! I've remembered it again...

• John Mortimer : Did you ever smoke opium?

  Clifford Mortimer : Certainly not! Gives you constipation. Ever see a portrait of that rogue Coleridge? Green around the gills and a stranger to the lavatory!

• Clifford Mortimer : [At tea]  Sex! Sex has been incredibly over-rated by the poets. I don't recall having many Mistresses with thighs like white marble...

• Clifford Mortimer : [Drowning Earwigs]  Just think, if we did this all over the world for a million years, would we cause a tiny dent in evolution? Would we produce an earwig that can swim?

• Clifford Mortimer : Within six months he'd married this hard-hearted girl. But he was not a Wicount and he was not a Nearl! He was not a baronite or a saviour to us, but the Bow-Legged conductor of a tuppenny bus!

• Clifford Mortimer : [disgraced colleague]  They shipped him off to the Colonies, and he never understood why!

• Clifford Mortimer : This egg's bloody runny!