Ian Fleming quotes

I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. (Ian Fleming)
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
Ian Fleming
You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.
Ian Fleming
Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.
Ian Fleming
Never say ‘no' to adventures. Always say ‘yes', otherwise you'll lead a very dull life.
Ian Fleming
Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch.
Ian Fleming
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.
Ian Fleming
I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It's very persnickety and old-maidish really, but then when I'm working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.
Ian Fleming
A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference.
Ian Fleming
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.
Ian Fleming
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. (Ian Fleming)
Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.
Ian Fleming
It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.
Ian Fleming
I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.
Ian Fleming
Just as, at least in one religion, accidia is the first of the cardinal sins, so bordom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned.
Ian Fleming
Older women are best, because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.
Ian Fleming
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?
Ian Fleming
Never say 'no' to adventures.
Ian Fleming
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.
Ian Fleming
Doctor No said, in the same soft resonant voice, ‘You are right. Mister Bond. That is just what I am, a maniac. All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards their goal. The great scientists, the artists, the philosophers, the religious leaders – all maniacs. What else but a blind singleness of purpose could have given focus to their genius, would have kept them in the groove of their purpose? Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Dissipation of energy, fragmentation of vision, loss of momentum, the lack of follow-through - these are the vices of the herd.' Doctor No sat slightly back in his chair. ‘I do not possess these vices. I am, as you correctly say, a maniac – a maniac, Mister Bond, with a mania for power. That' – the black holes glittered blankly at Bond through the contact lenses – ‘is the meaning of my life. That is why I am here. That is why you are here. That is why here exists.'
Ian Fleming
Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it. (Ian Fleming)
History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.
Ian Fleming
It's just that I'd rather die of drink than of thirst.
Ian Fleming
The gain to the winner is always less than the loss to the loser.
Ian Fleming
Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.
Ian Fleming