“When the odds are hopeless, when all seems to be lost, then is the time to be calm, to make a show of authority—at least of indifference.”
— Ian Fleming Primary sourceThis 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’.”
“It’s never too early to start winning.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Because people are very careful with the secrets of their own business doesn’t mean that they’ll be careful with the secrets of yours.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“I don’t drink tea. I hate it. It’s mud. Moreover it’s one of the main reasons for the downfall of the British Empire. Be a good girl and make me some coffee.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Never say ‘no’ to adventures.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Clausewitz’s first principle was to have a secure base. From there one proceeds to freedom of action.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“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.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Painters, writers, musicians are lonely people. So are statesmen and admirals and generals. But then, I added to be fair, so are criminals and lunatics. Let's just say, not to be too flattering, that true Individuals are lonely.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Most marriages don’t add two people together. They subtract one from the other.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“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 Primary source“You only live twice:
Once when you’re born,
Once when you look death in the face.”
“Bond liked fast cars and he liked driving them. Most American cars bored him. They lacked personality and the patina of individual craftsmanship that European cars have. They were just ‘vehicles’, similar in shape and in colour, and even in the tone of their horns. Designed to serve for a year and then be turned in in part exchange for the next year’s model. All the fun of driving had been taken out of them with the abolition of a gear-change, with hydraulic-assisted steering and spongy suspension. All effort had been smoothed away and all of that close contact with the machine and the road that extracts skill and nerve from the European driver.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“It was the mistakes one made at the beginning of a case that were the worst. They were the irretrievable ones, the ones that got you off on the wrong foot, that gave the enemy the first game.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Although he had not got to bed until two, Bond walked into his headquarters punctually at ten the next morning.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Power is the goal of all ambition.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behaviour and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a mouthful of smouldering straw then breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils?”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“If you fail at the large things it means you have not large ambitions. Concentration, focus—that is ah. The aptitudes come, the tools forge themselves. ‘Give me a fulcrum and I will move the world’—but only if the desire to move the world is there.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Bond loathed and despised tea, that flat, soft, time-wasting opium of the masses, but on his empty stomach, and in his febrile state, the sugary brew acted almost as an intoxicant.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Only law firm out there’s called Smith and Wesson.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“He’s not a bad guy really, except he’s so crooked, you shake hands with him you better count your fingers afterwards.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“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.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Above all, he liked it that everything was one’s own fault. There was only oneself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“I think it’s the same with all relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn’t care if the other is alive or dead, then it’s just no good.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“He was about six feet tall, slim and fit-looking. The eyes in the lean, slightly tanned face were a very clear gray-blue and as they observed the men they were cold and watchful. The narrowed watchful eyes gave his good looks the dangerous, almost cruel quality that had frightened me when I had first set eyes on him.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“The gain to the winner is, in some odd way, always less than the loss to the loser.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“You never get real adventures without a bit of risk somewhere.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards their goal. The great scientists, 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.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“The whole scene, the empty beach, the green and blue sea, the naked girl with the strands of fair hair, reminded Bond of something. He searched his mind. Yes, she was Botticelli’s Venus, seen from behind.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“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.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“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.
“Bond didn’t defend the practice. He simply maintained that the more effort and ingenuity you put into gambling, the more you took out.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“I am a poet in deeds—not often in words.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“The World Is Not Enough”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“He touched her for the last time and then they turned away from each other and walked off into their different lives.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“He was a secret agent, and still alive thanks to his exact attention to the detail of his profession.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“These Secret Service people always seemed to have time for sex however important their jobs might be.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“But I am greedy for life. I do too much of everything all the time. Suddenly one day my heart will fail. The Iron Crab will get me as it got my father. But I am not afraid of The Crab. At least I shall have died from an honourable disease. Perhaps they will put on my tombstone. ‘This Man Died from Living Too Much’.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“SCRAMBLED EGGS ‘JAMES BOND’
For FOUR individualists:
12 fresh eggs
Salt and pepper
5-6 oz. of fresh butter
Break the eggs into a bowl. Beat thoroughly with a fork and season well. In a small copper (or heavy-bottomed saucepan) melt four oz. of the butter. When melted, pour in the eggs and cook over a very low heat, whisking continuously with a small egg whisk.
While the eggs are slightly more moist than you would wish for eating, remove pan from heat, add rest of butter and continue whisking for half a minute, adding the while finely chopped chives or fine herbs. Serve on hot buttered toast in individual copper dishes (for appearance only) with pink champagne (Taittinger) and low music.”
— Ian Fleming Primary source“One dreams all day as well as all night.”
— Ian Fleming Primary sourceErnest Hemingway Jack London William Ralph Inge George Orwell Franklin D. Roosevelt