Top 180 Ian Fleming Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “You’re a bloody anarchist.’ He threw his arms in the air and let them fall helplessly to his sides. Bond laughed. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Take our friend Le Chiffre. It’s simple enough to say he was an evil man, at least it’s simple enough for me because he did evil things to me. If he was here now, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him, but out of personal revenge and not, I’m afraid, for some high moral reason or for the sake of my country.”

— Ian Fleming

152. “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

153. “Benzedrine,’ he said. ‘I rang up my secretary before dinner and asked her to wangle some out of the surgery at Headquarters.”

— Ian Fleming

154. “Bond swallowed. He looked over towards Vesper. Felix Leiter was again standing beside her. He grinned slightly and Bond smiled back and raised his hand from the table in a small gesture of benediction.”

— Ian Fleming

155. “This girl will only do these things on one condition.’ M.’s eyes narrowed until they were fierce, significant slits. ‘That you go out to Istanbul and bring her and the machine back to England.”

— Ian Fleming

156. “How soon Mathis had been proved right and how soon his own little sophistries had been exploded in his face!”

— Ian Fleming

157. “He wore a heavy black moustache and the backs of his hands on the rail were matted with black hair. Bond guessed that hair covered most of his squat body. Naked, Bond supposed, he would be an obscene object.”

— Ian Fleming

158. “She looked at him and saw that his nostrils were slightly flared. In other respects he seemed completely at ease, acknowledging cheerfully the greetings of the Casino functionaries.”

— Ian Fleming

159. “I am allergic to almost every form of international agency, conference or committee.”

— Ian Fleming

160. “Mathis had been unable to enlighten him. ‘Unless you have bought him yourself,’ he had said, ’you must assume that he has been bought by the other side. All concierges are venal. It is not their fault. They are trained to regard all hotel guests except maharajahs as potential cheats and thieves. They have as much concern for your comfort or well-being as crocodiles.”

— Ian Fleming

161. “However that may be, it is clear that he could have found many investments more savoury than prostitution, if he had not been tempted by the by-product of unlimited women for his personal use. Fate rebuked him with terrifying swiftness.”

— Ian Fleming

162. “Continue, my dear friend. It is interesting for me to see this new Bond. 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. Continue. Develop your arguments. There may be something I can use to my own chief the next time I want to get out of an unpleasant job.’ He grinned maliciously. Bond ignored him.”

— Ian Fleming

163. “Ah hears tings which Ah don’ like at all. Cain’t say much. Get mahself ’n plenty trouble. But yuh all want to watch yo step plenty good. Yassuh.”

— Ian Fleming

164. “Bond again walked round the room. This time he carefully inspected the walls and the neighbourhood of the bed and the telephone. Why not take the room? Why would there be microphones or secret doors? What would be the point of them?”

— Ian Fleming

165. “For an instant he felt nettled at the irony, the lightest shadow of a snub, with which she had met his decisiveness, and at the way he had risen to her quick glance. But it was only an infinitesimal clink of foils and as the bowing maitre d’hotel led them through the crowded room, it was forgotten as Bond in her wake watched the heads of the diners turn to look at her.”

— Ian Fleming

166. “Perhaps, after all, the right man was better than the right machine.”

— Ian Fleming

167. “On these things he spent all his money and it was his ambition to have as little as possible in his banking account when he was killed, as, when he was depressed, he knew he would be, before the statutory age of forty-five.”

— Ian Fleming

168. “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. – Vivienne Michel.”

— Ian Fleming

169. “I don’t care the hell what other people eat so long as they enjoy it. I can’t stand sad eaters and sad drinkers.”

— Ian Fleming

170. “What an extraordinary difference there was between a body full of a person and a body that was empty! Now there is someone, now there is no one.”

— Ian Fleming

171. “I decided on moustaches.”

— Ian Fleming

172. “His face showed neither pleasure nor excitement.”

— Ian Fleming

173. “For the first time since his capture, fear came to Bond and crawled up his spine.”

— Ian Fleming

174. “She seemed to Bond to give a quick involuntary shrug of the shoulders as she spoke, but then she leant impulsively towards him. ‘I have some news for you from Mathis. He was longing to tell you himself. It’s about the bomb. It’s a fantastic story.”

— Ian Fleming

175. “By the end of the week, Bond was sunburned and hard. He had cut his cigarettes down to ten a day and had not had a single drink. He could swim two miles without tiring, his hand was completely healed and all the scales of big city life had fallen from him.”

— Ian Fleming

176. “Her breasts were showing and Mr. Player, who was a very strong Quaker, didn’t think that was quite proper.”

— Ian Fleming

177. “The safe, empty room sneered at him.”

— Ian Fleming

178. “There had been something very disquieting about the dinner-table downstairs. It had been laid for only three people.”

— Ian Fleming

179. “He looked up. She was standing a few feet away from him. He noticed that she was wearing a black beret at a rakish angle and that she looked exciting and mysterious like someone you see driving by abroad, alone in an open car, someone unattainable and more desirable than anyone you have ever known. Someone who is on her way to make love to somebody else. Someone who is not for you.”

— Ian Fleming

180. “I like doing everything fully, getting the most out of everything one does. I think that’s the way to live.”

— Ian Fleming

181. “Somebody said that to become very rich you have to be helped by a combination of remarkable circumstances and an unbroken run of luck.”

— Ian Fleming

182. “He went off down the corridor, feeling, for the first time in his life, totally inadequate.”

— Ian Fleming