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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.

Ben Elton

I see dull people as projects … to be reformed
BEN ELTON

Dull People Project
This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.
BEN ELTON

Psychology Special Violence
Artists don’t create society, they reflect it
BEN ELTON

Artist Crete Reflect Society
Kingsley watched her disappear from the room, wondering if his heart would break. Logic informed him that of course it would not. The heart was no more than a muscle, a pump which distributed blood about the body.
BEN ELTON

Blood Heart Men
Beyond love, beyond unrequited love, perhaps even beyond any other passion known to humanity, deep, deep in the depths of the turgid, clinging, swamplike pit of despair that lies dormant within every soul, lurks JEALOUSY.
BEN ELTON

Jealous Love Lying Unrequited
I loved writing ‘Two Brothers’ more than anything else I have written. It’s the first book I’ve written that I’ve always known I wanted to write. Having said that, it also kept me awake at nights.
BEN ELTON

Book Brother Writing
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.
BEN ELTON

Nice People Thinking
Sympathy for victims is always counter-balanced by an equal and opposite feeling of resentment towards them.
BEN ELTON

Feelings Opposite Sympathy
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.
BEN ELTON

Love Memorable People
The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth.
BEN ELTON

Hippie Self Thinking
And of course to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.
BEN ELTON

Book Key Lecture Paper Read
I’m easy to work with, not a pushover, but I respond to criticism and find it inspiring.
BEN ELTON

Criticism Easy Inspiring
Leaders should never, ever try to look cool – that’s for dictators
BEN ELTON

Leader Looks Trying
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.
BEN ELTON

Believe Groups Looks
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.
BEN ELTON

Doe Real World
I don’t consider myself Jewish. I am half-Jewish by race but not through my mother.
BEN ELTON

Half Mother Race
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 ELTON

Celebration Losing World
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.
BEN ELTON

Beens Comedy Instinct
I find the fact that billionaires are quoted as if the fact that they are billionaires gives them some kind of wisdom is outrageous.
BEN ELTON

Facts Giving Kind
I’m lucky because the strongest emotion I have ever felt is being in love, and that definitely informs my writing.
BEN ELTON

Being Love Lucky Writing
People who get through life dependent on other people’s possessions are always the first to lecture you on how little possessions count.
BEN ELTON

First Little People
And roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is my personal signature dish.
BEN ELTON

Beef Pudding Signature
Yes, OK, farty is a silly word. I wish I’d never used it. I’m 34. Perhaps it was a word for my 20s.
BEN ELTON

Silly Stupid Wish
My 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!
BEN ELTON

Advice Looks Novel
I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition – and I have never suffered from it.
BEN ELTON

Ambition Thinking Trying
You’re mugging old ladies every bit as much if you pinch their pension fund
BEN ELTON

Fund Lady Old Pension
I think it is very difficult to legislate for morality.
BEN ELTON

Difficult Morality Thinking

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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I try hard not to preach, but I get carried away, which is a mistake, but it’s a risk worth running.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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