Ben Elton Quotes - Page 2

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!

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.

And roast beef and Yorkshire pudding is my personal signature dish.

I see dull people as projects ... to be reformed

I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition - and I have never suffered from it.

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.

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.

Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar. You have to hold it, you have to read it.

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.

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.

This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence.

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

If I did things for the money, I'd have done adverts in the 1980s, when I was hot enough to be offered them, and 'Police Academy 6,' which I was asked to write.

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.

You think I look like a teletubby?

You're mugging old ladies every bit as much if you pinch their pension fund