Top 180 Ian Fleming Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “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

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

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

— Ian Fleming

106. “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

107. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

110. “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

111. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

113. “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

114. “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

115. “We’re both travelling bad roads and all bad roads lead to the bad town.”

— Ian Fleming

116. “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

117. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

119. “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

120. “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

121. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

124. “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

125. “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

126. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

128. “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

129. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

132. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

134. “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

135. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

140. “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

141. “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

142. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

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

— Ian Fleming

145. “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

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

— Ian Fleming

147. “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

148. “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

149. “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

150. “Madame Versoix had been interrupted in the middle of preparing dinner. She wore an apron and held a wooden spoon in one hand. She was younger than her husband, chubby and handsome and warm-eyed. Instinctively Bond guessed that they had no children and that they gave their thwarted affection to their friends and some regular customers, and probably to some pets.”

— Ian Fleming