Ian Fleming
You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.Collection: Death
Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, 'Casino Royale' dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired.Collection: Morning
Older women are best, because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.Collection: Women
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
A horse is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle.
Never say 'no' to adventures. Always say 'yes', otherwise you'll lead a very dull life.
This country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date.. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.
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.
Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.
A woman should be an illusion.
It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.
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.
As a result of 50 years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits... the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch.
I don't regard James Bond precisely as a hero, but at least he does get on and do his duty, in an extremely corny way.
Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.
I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.
As for sex, well, I mean sex is a perfectly respectable subject as far as Shakespeare is concerned. I mean, all history is love and violence.
I was just on the edge of getting married, and I was frenzied at the prospect of this great step in my life after having been a bachelor for so long. And I really wanted to take my mind off of the agony, and so I decided to sit down and write a book.
If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive.
History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.Collection: Moving
Never say 'no' to adventures.Collection: Adventure
Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is dueCollection: Worry
Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.Collection: Breakfast
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.Collection: Simple
All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards thier goal. The great scientists, the philosophers, the religious leaders - all maniacs. What else but a blind singlenee of purpose could have given focus to thier genius, would have kept them in the groove of purpose. Mania... is as priceless as genius.Collection: Religious
It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.Collection: Drink
The gain to the winner is always less than the loss to the loser.Collection: Loss
Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.Collection: Loneliness
Older women are best because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.Collection: Sex
Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.Collection: Pockets
When I wrote the first [Bond novel] in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened... when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard.Collection: Men
Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.Collection: Fighting
A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference.Collection: Indifference
I always make it a rule never to look back. Otherwise, I'd ask myself how I could write such piffle and live with myself, day after day.Collection: Writing
Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.Collection: Love Life
A medium Vodka dry Martini - with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred.Collection: Dry
Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.Collection: Moving
And then one day when you're playing your little game you'll suddenly find yourself pinned down like a butterfly.Collection: Butterfly
Unfortunately most ways of making big money take a long time. By the time one has made the money one is too old to enjoy it.Collection: Long
They want us dead,' said Bond calmly. 'So we have to stay alive.Collection: Alive
The World Is Not EnoughCollection: World
Shaken and not stirred.Collection: Classic
Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the centre of them. When one gets there the result is unrewarding, but the process is instructive and entertaining.Collection: Long
Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.Collection: Men
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'.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Dark
She explained to me later that she must have been possessed by a subconscious desire to be raped. Well she found me in the mountains and she was raped - by me.Collection: Desire
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.Collection: Bored