Ian Fleming Quotes

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action

Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold.

Tears of forlornness and self-pity welled out of his eyes.

Bond closed his eyes and mentally explored his body. The worst pain was in his wrists and ankles and in his right hand where the Russian had cut him. In the centre of the body there was no feeling. He assumed that he had been given a local anaesthetic. The rest of his body ached dully as if he had been beaten all over. He could feel the pressure of bandages everywhere and his unshaven neck and chin prickled against the sheets. From the feel of the bristles he knew that he must have been at least three days without shaving. That meant two days since the morning of the torture.

Bond found this irksome. He disliked being cosseted. It gave him claustrophobia.

Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.

I have discussed this with him and he points out that the Rolex Oyster Perpetual weighs about six ounces and would appreciably slow up the use of his left hand in combat. His practice, in fact, is to use fairly cheap, expendable wrist watches on expanding metal bracelets which can be slipped forward over the thumb and used in the form of a knuckle-duster, either on the outside or the inside of the hand.

Women were for recreation. On a job, they got in the way and fogged things up with sex and hurt feelings and all the emotional baggage they carried around. One had to look out for them and take care of them.

Even the highest tree has an axe waiting at its foot.

I prefer to regard myself as one who has the ability and the mental and nervous equipment to make his own laws and act according to them rather than accept the laws that suit the lowest common denominator of the people.

ALTHOUGH HE had not got to bed until two, Bond walked into his headquarters punctually at ten the next morning.

Clean-shaven and dressed in the conventional disguise with which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American millionaires.

Bond again walked round the room. This time he carefully inspected the walls and the neighbourhood of the bed and the telephone. Why not take the room? Why would there be microphones or secret doors? What would be the point of them?

Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.

I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.

Bond frowned. 'It's not difficult to get a Double O number if you're prepared to kill people,' he said. 'That's all the meaning it has. It's nothing to be particularly proud of.

It was tied with a Windsor knot. Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad. Bond decided to forget his prejudice.

Prohibition is the trigger of crime.

For the first time since his capture, fear came to Bond and crawled up his spine.

me. They found me. The

He awoke in the evening completely refreshed. After a cold shower, Bond walked over to the Casino. Since the night before he had lost the mood of the tables. He needed to re-establish that focus which is half mathematical and half intuitive and which, with a slow pulse and a sanguine temperament, Bond knew to be the essential equipment of any gambler who was set on winning.

Madame Versoix had been interrupted in the middle of preparing dinner. She wore an apron and held a wooden spoon in one hand. She was younger than her husband, chubby and handsome and warm-eyed. Instinctively Bond guessed that they had no children and that they gave their thwarted affection to their friends and some regular customers, and probably to some pets.

The licence to kill for the Secret Service, the double-0 prefix, was a great honour. It had been earned hardly. It brought James Bond the only assignments he enjoyed - the dangerous ones.

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.

A woman should be an illusion.

My mental hands were empty, and I felt I must do something as a counterirritant or antibody to my hysterical alarm at getting married at the age of 43.

I'm looking for Commander James Bond, not an overgrown stunt man. [on meeting Sean Connery]

One of the bibles of my youth was 'Birds of the West Indies,' by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, 'My God, that's the dullest name I've ever heard,' so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exciting one.

And of course, Japan, with the highest suicide statistics in the world, a country with an unquenchable thirst for the bizarre, the cruel and the terrible, would provide the perfect last refuge for him.

Look my friend, I've got to commit a murder tonight. Not you. Me. So be a good chap and stuff it, would you?

His headache was still sitting over his right eye as if it had been nailed there.

Bond looked at the beautiful day and smiled. And no man, not even Mr. Big, would have liked the expression on his face.

If you fail at the large things it means you have not large ambitions. Concentration, focus - that is all. The aptitudes come, the tools forge themselves.

Before a man's forty, girls cost nothing. After that you have to pay money, or tell a story. Of the two, it's the story that hurts most. Anyway I'm not forty yet.

What a man! He certainly seems to have the run of this country. Just shows how one can push a democracy around, what with habeas corpus and human rights and all the rest. Glad we haven't got him on our hands in England.

Bond insisted ordering Leiter's Haig-and-Haig "on the rocks" and then he looked carefully at the barman. "A Dry Martini", he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet." "Oui, monsieur." Just a moment. Three measures of Gordons, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemonpeel. Got it?" "Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

Ah hears tings which Ah don' like at all. Cain't say much. Get mahself 'n plenty trouble. But yuh all want to watch yo step plenty good. Yassuh.

Garch a har?" -Oddjob, Goldfinger

He put down the receiver and looked vaguely at the paper in his hand. It was a rough piece of white wrapping paper. Scrawled in pencil in ragged block letters were the words:
HE DISAGREED WITH SOMETHING THAT ATE HIM
And underneath in brackets:
(P.S. WE HAVE PLENTY MORE JOKES AS GOOD AS THIS)

For, or so they whispered, she would take the camp-stool and draw it up close below the face of the man or woman that hung down over the edge of the interrogation table. Then she would squat down on the stool and and look into the face and quietly say 'No. 1' or 'No. 10' or 'No. 25' and the inquisitors would know what she meant and they would begin. And she would watch the eyes in the face a few inches away from hers and breathe in the screams as if they were perfume.

Bond didn't defend the practice. He simply maintained that the more effort and ingenuity you put into gambling, the more you took out.

People do connect me with James Bond simply because I happen to like scrambled eggs and short-sleeved shirts and some of the things that James Bond does, but I certainly haven't got his guts nor his very lively appetites.

Miss Moneypenny would have been desirable but for eyes which were cool and direct and quizzical.

Women are often meticulous and safe drivers, but they are very seldom first-class. In general, Bond regarded them as a mild hazard and he always gave them plenty of road and was ready for the unpredictable. Four women in a car he regarded as the highest potential danger, and two women nearly as lethal. Women together cannot keep silent in a car, and when women talk they have to look into each other's faces. An exchange of words is not enough. They have to see the other person's expression, perhaps to read behind the others' words or analyze the reaction to their own. So two women in the front seat of a car constantly distract each other's attention from the road ahead and four women are more than doubly dangerous for the driver not only has to hear and see, what her companion is saying but also, for women are like that, what the two behind are talking about.

He suddenly dropped his bantering tone and looked at Bond sharply and venomously.

History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep changing parts.

I'm behaving like a pig,' she said happily. 'You always give me all the things I like best. I've never been so spoiled before.' She gazed across the terrace at the moonlit bay. 'I wish I deserved it.' Her voice had a wry undertone. 'What do you mean?' asked Bond surprised. 'Oh, I don't know. I suppose people get what they deserve, so perhaps I do deserve it.' She looked at him and smiled. Her eyes narrowed quizzically. 'You really don't know much about me,' she said suddenly. Bond was surprised by the undertone of seriousness in her voice.

And now that you have seen a really evil man, you will know how evil they can be and you will go after them to destroy them in order to protect yourself and the people you love. You won't wait to argue about it. You know what they look like now and what they can do to people.

Those who deserve to die, die the death they deserve.

You never get real adventures without a bit of risk somewhere.

A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.' ...
Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?

Stupefied, but unharmed, he allowed Mathis to lead him off towards the Splendide from which guests and servants were pouring in chattering fright. As the distant clang of bells heralded the arrival of ambulances and fire-engines, they managed to push through the throng and up the short stairs and along the corridor to Bond's room.

Oh, it's all been such a lark.

She looked at him and saw that his nostrils were slightly flared. In other respects he seemed completely at ease, acknowledging cheerfully the greetings of the Casino functionaries.

The World Is Not Enough

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture, 'The Gilded Mousetrap School' he thought it might be called, whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not.

Bond sat down and looked across into the tranquil, lined sailor's face that he loved, honoured and obeyed.

Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch.

'Those who deserve to die, he paused, 'die the death they deserve' - Mr Big

You can get far in North America with laconic grunts. "Huh," "hun," and "hi!" in their various modulations, together with "sure," "guess so," "that so?" and "nuts!" will meet almost any contingency.

A medium Vodka dry Martini - with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred.

Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.

AS, TWO weeks later, James Bond awoke in his room at the Hotel Splendide, some of this history passed through his mind.

Bond awoke in his own room at dawn and for a time he lay and stroked his memories.

Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel.

Everything I write has a precedent in truth.

He saw her now only as a spy. Their love and his grief were relegated to the boxroom of his mind. Later, perhaps they would be dragged out, dispassionately examined, and then bitterly thrust back with other sentimental baggage he would rather forget.

What's your name?"
"Bond. James Bond. What's yours?"
She reflected "Rider."
"What Rider?"
"Honeychile."
Bond smiled.

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Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due.

It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray and the bullet would never miss.

Goldfinger could not have known that high tension was Bond's natural way of life and that pressure and danger relaxed him.

Outside the bus the smell of sulphur hit Bond with sickening force. It was a horrible smell, from somewhere down in the stomach of the world.

I should spend the money quickly, Commander Bond.

There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page.

He's not a bad guy really, except he's so crooked, you shake hands with him you better count your fingers afterwards.

Danger, like a third man, was standing in the room.

He was used to oblique control and rather liked it. He felt it feather-bedded him a little, allowed him to give or take an hour or two in his communications with M.

Never job backwards. What might have been was a waste of time.

Slowly the red dawn broke over the endless plain of black grass that gradually turned to the famous Kentucky blue as the sun ironed out the shadows.

These politicians can't see that the atomic age has created the most deadly saboteur in the history of the world – the little man with the heavy suitcase.

LE CHIFFRE looked incuriously at him, the whites of his eyes, which showed all round the irises, lending something impassive and doll-like to his gaze. He slowly removed one thick hand from the table and slipped it into the pocket of his dinner-jacket. The hand came out holding a small metal cylinder with a cap which Le Chiffre unscrewed. He inserted the nozzle of the cylinder, with an obscene deliberation, twice into each black nostril in turn, and luxuriously inhaled the benzedrine vapour.

The stars winked down their cryptic morse and he had no key to their cipher.

THERE ARE moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent. There are assignments on which he is required to act the part of a very rich man; occasions when he takes refuge in good living to efface the memory of danger and the shadow of death; and times when, as was now the case, he is a guest in the territory of an allied Secret Service.

No, when the stresses are too great for the tired metal, when the ground mechanic who checks the de-icing equipment is crossed in love and skimps his job, way back in London, Idlewild, Gander, Montreal; when those or many things happen, then the little warm room with propellers in front falls straight down out of the sky into the sea or on to the land, heavier than air, fallible, vain. And the forty little heavier-than-air people, fallible within the plane's fallibility, vain within its larger vanity, fall down with it and make little holes in the land or little splashes in the sea. Which is anyway their destiny, so why worry? You are linked to the ground mechanic's careless fingers in Nassau just as you are linked to the weak head of the little man in the family saloon who mistakes the red light for the green and meets you head-on, for the first and last time, as you are motoring quietly home from some private sin. There's nothing to do about it. You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy. Light a cigarette and be grateful you are still alive as you suck the smoke deep into your lungs. Your stars have already let you come quite a long way since you left your mother's womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world. Perhaps they'll even let you go to Jamaica tonight. Can't you hear those cheerful voices in the control tower that have said quietly all day long, 'Come in BOAC. Come in Panam. Come in KLM'?

Mistress Agatha Brown, she was Church of England, but she just done gone to the Catholics. And it seems they don't hold with places like 3½, not even when they're decently run.

There was a sharp 'phut', no louder than a bubble of air escaping from a tube of toothpaste. No other noise at all, and suddenly Le Chiffre had grown another eye, a third eye on a level with the other two, right where the thick nose started to jut out below the forehead. It was a small black eye, without eyelashes or eyebrows.

Diamonds are forever.

Why not make it for always?

All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken.It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.

Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behavior and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a mouthful of smoldering straw then breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils?

You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face

Against the background of this luminous and sparkling stage Bond stood in the sunshine and felt his mission to be incongruous and remote and his dark profession an affront to his fellow actors.

People are islands,' she said. 'They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate. Even if they've been married for fifty years.

One dreams all day as well as all night . . .

power is the goal of all ambition,

Bond swallowed. He looked over towards Vesper. Felix Leiter was again standing beside her. He grinned slightly and Bond smiled back and raised his hand from the table in a small gesture of benediction.

And don't get hurt,' [Dexter] added. 'There's no one to help you up there. And don't go stirring up a lot of trouble for us. This case isn't ripe yet. Until it is, our policy with Mr Big is 'live and let live'.'
Bond looked quizzically at Captain Dexter
In my job,' he said, 'when I come up against a man like this one, I have another motto. It's 'live and let die'.

He looked up at Mathis to see how bored he was getting with these introspective refinements of what, to Mathis, was a simple question of duty. Mathis smiled back at him.

He was a secret agent, and still alive thanks to his exact attention to the detail of his profession.