Ian Fleming Quotes

The gain to the winner is always less than the loss to the loser.

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'.

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

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?

Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due

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

He could not just wear a watch. It had to be a Rolex.

Mine’s Bond – James Bond.

These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men.

The conventional parabola--sentiment, the touch of the hand, the kiss, the passionate kiss, the feel of the body, the climax in the bed, then more bed, then less bed, then the boredom, the tears and the final bitterness--was to him shameful and hypocritical.

If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive.

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.

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.

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?

I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much.

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

If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain. By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren’t disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks.

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

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

It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.

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.

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.

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.

Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.

I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.

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.

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.

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

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.

Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.

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

Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.

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.

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.

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.