Top 180 Ian Fleming Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The thin man had hit him a hard professional cutting blow with the edge of the hand. There was something rather deadly about his accuracy and lack of effort. He was now again lying back, his eyes closed. He was a man to make you afraid, an evil man. Bond hoped he might get a chance of killing him.”

— Ian Fleming

102. “He cursed himself and cursed the hubris which had made him so sure the battle was won and the enemy in flight.”

— Ian Fleming

103. “There might be cheats or possible cheats amongst them, men who beat their wives, men with perverse instincts, greedy men, cowardly men, lying men; but the elegance of the room invested each one with a kind of aristocracy.”

— Ian Fleming

104. “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

105. “I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad.”

— Ian Fleming

106. “Head of S., thought Bond. They’re certainly giving me the red carpet treatment.”

— Ian Fleming

107. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

108. “Each day the atmosphere became more hateful. It seemed fantastic to Bond that human relationships could collapse into dust overnight and he searched his mind again and again for a reason.”

— Ian Fleming

109. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

110. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

111. “Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Dissipation.”

— Ian Fleming

112. “Ever heard of “The House of Diamonds”?”

— Ian Fleming

113. “Benzedrine,’ he said. ‘I rang up my secretary before dinner and asked her to wangle some out of the surgery at Headquarters. It’s what I shall need if I’m going to keep my wits about me tonight. It’s apt to make one a bit overconfident, but that’ll be a help too.”

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

115. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

116. “Vesper smiled at him. ‘I like it,’ she said. ‘I like doing everything fully, getting the most out of everything one does. I think that’s the way to live. But it sounds rather schoolgirlish when one says it,’ she added apologetically.”

— Ian Fleming

117. “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

118. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

120. “A scar had been beaten into his mind which would only heal by experience.”

— Ian Fleming

121. “They want us dead,′ said Bond calmly. ‘So we have to stay alive.”

— Ian Fleming

122. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

123. “THE SCENT and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.”

— Ian Fleming

124. “The double 0 numerals signify an agent who has killed and who is privileged to kill on active service.”

— Ian Fleming

125. “Put your guns away and get him out,’ he ordered brusquely. ‘I’ll keep you covered. Be careful of him. I don’t want a corpse. And hurry up, it’s getting light.”

— Ian Fleming

126. “It’s wonderful,’ said Bond, deciding to relieve her mind, though irritated with her obvious guilt over this childish mystery. ‘You must go in and we’ll have breakfast on the terrace. I’m ravenous. I’m sorry I made you jump. I was just startled to see anyone about at this hour of the morning.”

— Ian Fleming

127. “Push dem under the doors,’ he said. ‘Ah cain’t do nuthen else. Git mah throat cut. But Ah don’ like any foolin’ aroun’ wid da customers ’n my cyar. Nossuh.”

— Ian Fleming

128. “During interrogation he committed suicide by swallowing a coat-button of compressed potassium cyanide.”

— Ian Fleming

129. “Mathis turned off the radio and waved an affectionate farewell. The door slammed and silence settled on the room. Bond sat for a while by the window and enjoyed being alive.”

— Ian Fleming

130. “Out of the mouth of the huge, shadowed poster, between the great violet lips, half-open in ecstasy, the dark shape of a man emerged and hung down like a worm from the mouth of a corpse.”

— Ian Fleming

131. “It was one of those Septembers when it seemed that the summer would never end.”

— Ian Fleming

132. “The man seemed to realize that he was being watched. He looked up and gazed incuriously at them for a moment. Then he reached for a brief-case on the chair beside him, extracted a newspaper and started to read it, his elbows propped up on the table.”

— Ian Fleming

133. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

135. “A few hundred yards ahead a Michelin post showed where a small parochial road crossed with the highway.”

— Ian Fleming

136. “She kept on patching up the edifice of her deceit until Bond wanted to spank her and tell her to relax and tell the truth. Instead he just gave her a reassuring pat on the back outside her room and told her to hurry up and have her bathe. Then he went on to his room.”

— Ian Fleming

137. “Bond’s mind was clear again. By a miracle he had survived a devastating wound. He could feel his armpits still wet with the fear of it. But the success of his gambit with the chair had wiped out all memories of the dreadful valley of defeat through which he had just passed.”

— Ian Fleming

138. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

139. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

142. “One Saturday, he had gone to take the subway to Pennsylvania Station en route for the Soviet week-end rest camp at Glen Cove, the former Morgan estate on Long Island.”

— Ian Fleming

143. “If one could be right every hand, none of us would be here,’ he said philosophically.”

— Ian Fleming

144. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

146. “Suspiciously Bond walked over and examined the screws which secured the panel to.”

— Ian Fleming

147. “He provides a vision. He often reminds countries of their responsibilities in a way that makes it seem not only like a legal obligation but a moral responsibility.”

— Ian Fleming

148. “Where am I?’ he asked and was surprised that his voice sounded firm and clear.”

— Ian Fleming

149. “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.”

— Ian Fleming

150. “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.”

— Ian Fleming