I resent the creation of a world in which beauty is a reminder of what we’re losing rather than a celebration of what we have.
BEN ELTONMy advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they’ve read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!
More Ben Elton Quotes
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I don’t consider myself Jewish. I am half-Jewish by race but not through my mother.
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Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them.
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You think I look like a teletubby?
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People who get through life dependent on other people’s possessions are always the first to lecture you on how little possessions count.
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This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.
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Leaders should never, ever try to look cool – that’s for dictators
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I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition – and I have never suffered from it.
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Comedy will always be central to what I do, it’s just an instinct for me, but I am a writer and always have been.
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We’ve all got to look at ourselves, start with yourself, that’s all you can do. I believe that we can act responsibly as a group, it’s just that there are vested interests telling us not to bother.
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I try hard not to preach, but I get carried away, which is a mistake, but it’s a risk worth running.
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The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth.
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I did not vote Labour because they’ve heard of Oasis and nobody is going to vote Tory because William Hague has got a baseball cap.
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I think it is very difficult to legislate for morality.
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If only the strength of the love that people feel when it is reciprocated could be as intense and obsessive as the love we feel when it is not; then marriages would be truly made in heaven.
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My parents were secular. I am an atheist.
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You’re mugging old ladies every bit as much if you pinch their pension fund
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I exercise hard and the reason I do is so that I can earn the things I like to consume.
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And roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is my personal signature dish.
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I see dull people as projects … to be reformed
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I don’t know what people who I’ve never met think about me. Some have written horrible things, some have written nice things – but I’m proud of the fact I’ve remained close to everyone I’ve ever worked with.
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Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar. You have to hold it, you have to read it.
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Artists don’t create society, they reflect it
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The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value.
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No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi.
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There are lots of things I could have done for the money, but I’ve made a great living doing the things I want to do.
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I’m lucky because the strongest emotion I have ever felt is being in love, and that definitely informs my writing.
BEN ELTON