Ben Elliot quotes:

The way I choose to live my own life rates time and space as real luxuries.

I'm not going to complain to New Yorkers about working too hard.

I eat out three times a day most days of the year. This is no big deal to most New Yorkers, and it is not something I am necessarily proud of - it's simply the nature of my itinerant life.

I have an issue with others ordering for me, and I spend far too long haranguing people that my choices are the best. I apologize for the amount of conversations I have ruined with this attitude.

Fastidious attention to detail makes the difference between an OK service and first class service.

A quintessential experience is to raft the Rio Grande through the Blue Mountains, stopping off at waterfalls and having picnics of barbecued fish.

I studied politics and economics at Bristol, and people always assumed that I'd go into politics or a non-government organisation when I left. I might well do this later on. I'd love to represent a West Country seat in the House of Commons.

In my heart and soul, I am a West Country man, and ideally, my weekends are spent there.

When I lived in New York, I discovered these Russian & Turkish Baths in East 10th Street. Great for a platza treatment - plus, you'll run into the world and his wife there.

For me, a stay at the Uma Paro with Pilates every morning is a perfect escape.

If people don't feel they've got your attention, you're not going to succeed.

It's not marriage that I crave. Many of my friends who have married are pretty miserable. Within a year and a half, most of them are either unhappy or divorced.

I don't believe that saying things because you feel they are what people want to hear is the right way to be in any part of your life.

I knew Quintessentially was a success when my father, who does a lot of business in Beirut, introduced himself to somebody and they said, 'Oh, do you know Ben Elliot? I'd really like to meet him.' I remember him ringing me up, really annoyed.

I'm a creature of habit and tend to favour small, traditional English businesses.

In the same way I am addicted to puddings - the sweeter the better - I have become addicted to the daily routines my Pilates and Gyrotonic guru, Nada, puts me through.

I have to be passionate about everything I do.

I definitely like sorting stuff out, and I have the enthusiasm to try and help.

I don't set out to be connected. My business has allowed me to meet lots of interesting people, some of whom have become friends; but you can't force it. This terrible word - 'networking' - I really hate.

My obsession with eating out partly comes from having spent 10 long years at English boarding schools in the 1980s, where food was pretty low on the list.

Since I travel to the four corners of this planet for work, I don't need sun holidays or that kind of thing.

With offices in 64 cities around the world, it is sometimes a challenge to ensure that I've got my finger on the pulse with every one, everywhere. Staying in touch means early rising for calls with China and Japan, and late calls with the U.S.

My father instilled in me an attitude that you couldn't really enjoy yourself unless you had done something to deserve it. So, my childhood was spent working on farms or local shops or, when I got older, in banks.

What goes around comes around in business, and it's better to help people out rather than bill them every time you speak to them.

Art is the ultimate luxury good, but one that can make you think, give a you a blast of beauty and enhance your life. Even if the work's made of plasticine.