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Ian Fleming Quotes

Ian Lancaster Fleming was an English author, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.

While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units, 30 Assault Unit and T-Force. His wartime service and his career as a journalist provided much of the background, detail and depth of the James Bond novels.

Fleming wrote his first Bond novel, Casino Royale, in 1952. It was a success, with three print runs being commissioned to cope with the demand. Eleven Bond novels and two collections of short stories followed between 1953 and 1966. The novels revolve around James Bond, an officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is also known by his code number, 007, and was a commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. The Bond stories rank among the best-selling series of fictional books of all time, having sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Fleming also wrote the children's story Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang and two works of non-fiction. In 2008, The Times ranked Fleming 14th on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

Fleming was married to Ann Charteris, who was divorced from the second Viscount Rothermere because of her affair with the author. Fleming and Charteris had a son, Caspar. Fleming was a heavy smoker and drinker for most of his life and succumbed to heart disease in 1964 at the age of 56. Two of his James Bond books were published posthumously; other writers have since produced Bond novels. Fleming's creation has appeared in film twenty-six times, portrayed by seven actors. Wikipedia  

✵ 28. May 1908 – 12. August 1964
Ian Fleming photo

Works

Casino Royale
Casino Royale
Ian Fleming
Goldfinger
Goldfinger
Ian Fleming
From Russia, with Love
Casino Royale
Casino Royale
Ian Fleming
Goldfinger
Goldfinger
Ian Fleming
From Russia, with Love
Ian Fleming: 44 quotes21 likes

Famous Ian Fleming Quotes

The quote is mistakenly attributed to the author

“I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

Ian Fleming book You Only Live Twice

Source: You Only Live Twice (1964), Ch. 21 : Orbit. Fleming is quoting Jack London directly.

“You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face.”

Ian Fleming book You Only Live Twice

Source: You Only Live Twice (1964), Ch. 11 : Anatomy Class

“Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes’, otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.”

Ian Fleming book Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang

Source: Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964), Ch. 2

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

Ian Fleming book Goldfinger

Variant: Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action'.
Source: Auric Goldfinger, Ch. 14 : Things That Go Thump In The Night

“It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.”

Ian Fleming book Thunderball

Source: Thunderball

Ian Fleming Quotes about men

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

Ian Fleming book Goldfinger

Source: Goldfinger

“I’m wondering whose side I ought to be on. I’m getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good Le Chiffre. The Devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don’t give the poor chap a chance. There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition.
‘So,’ continued Bond, warming to his argument, ‘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 book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 20 : The Nature Of Evil

“Doctor No said, in the same soft resonant voice, ‘You are right. Mister Bond. That is just what I am, a maniac. All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards their goal. The great scientists, the artists, 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.’ Doctor No sat slightly back in his chair. ‘I do not possess these vices. I am, as you correctly say, a maniac – a maniac, Mister Bond, with a mania for power. That’ – the black holes glittered blankly at Bond through the contact lenses – ‘is the meaning of my life. That is why I am here. That is why you are here. That is why here exists.”

Ian Fleming

Dr. Julius No, in Ch. 15 : Pandora’s Box
Dr. No (1958)

Ian Fleming Quotes

“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 book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale

“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?”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 7 : Rouge et Noir
Context: Bond insisted ordering Leiter's Haig-and-Haig "on the rocks" and then he looked carefully at the barman. "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 lemon peel. Got it?" "Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea.

“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.”

Ian Fleming book The Spy Who Loved Me

Source: The Spy Who Loved Me

“I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.”

Ian Fleming book Goldfinger

Source: Goldfinger

“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Opening line, Ch. 1 : The Secret Agent
Casino Royale (1953)
Context: 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.

“Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 20 : The Nature Of Evil
Context: "Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles."
He laughed. "But don't let me down and become human yourself. We would lose a wonderful machine."

“Never say 'no' to adventures.”

Ian Fleming book Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang

Source: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

“Mine’s Bond – James Bond.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale

“Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale

“The World Is Not Enough”

Ian Fleming book On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Source: On Her Majesty's Secret Service

“Unfortunately most ways of making big money take a long time. By the time one has made the money one is too old to enjoy it.”

Ian Fleming book Goldfinger

Source: Goldfinger

“Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale

“Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.”

Ian Fleming book The Spy Who Loved Me

Source: The Spy Who Loved Me

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

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Variant: History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.
Source: Casino Royale

“Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.”

Ian Fleming book Diamonds Are Forever

Source: Diamonds Are Forever

“Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.”

Ian Fleming book From Russia, with Love

Source: From Russia With Love

“… Goldfinger could not have known that high tension was Bond's natural way of life and that pressure and danger relaxed him.”

Ian Fleming book Goldfinger

Source: Goldfinger

“Before a man's forty, girls cost nothing. After that you have to pay money, or tell a story. Of the two, it's the story that hurts most. Anyway I'm not forty yet.”

Ian Fleming book Diamonds Are Forever

Source: Diamonds Are Forever

“This country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. 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.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 20 : The Nature Of Evil

“I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It come partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It's very pernickety and oldmaidish really, but then when I'm working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 8 : Pink Lights And Champagne

“It was a dark, clean-cut face, with a three-inch scar showing whitely down the sunburned skin of the right cheek. The eyes were wide and level under straight, rather long black brows. The hair was black, parted on the left, and carelessly brushed so that a thick black comma fell down over the right eyebrow. The longish straight nose ran down to a short upper lip below which was a wide and finely drawn but cruel mouth. The line of jaw was straight and firm. A section of dark suit, white shirt and black knitted tie completed the picture.”

Ian Fleming book From Russia, with Love

Source: From Russia with Love (1957), Ch. 6 : Death Warrant

“And I would like a medium Vodka dry Martini — with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please. I would prefer Russian or Polish vodka.”

Ian Fleming

James Bond, in Ch. 15 : Pandora’s Box
Dr. No (1958)

“Just as, in at least one religion, accidie is the first of the cardinal sins, so boredom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned.”

Ian Fleming book From Russia, with Love

Source: From Russia with Love (1957), Ch. 11 : The Soft Life

“Most motor-cars are conglomerations (this is a long word for bundles) of steel and wire and rubber and plastic, and electricity and oil and petrol and water, and the toffee papers you pushed down the crack in the back seat last Sunday. Smoke comes out of the back of them and horn-squawks out of the front, and they have white lights like big eyes in front, and red lights behind. And that is about that — just motor-cars, tin boxes on wheels for running about in.
But some motorcars — mine, for instance, and perhaps yours — are different. If you get to like them and understand them, if you are kind to them and don't scratch their paint and bang their doors, if you fill them up and pump them up when they need it, of you keep them clean and polish and out the rain and snow as much as possible, you will find, you MAY find, that they become almost like persons — MORE than just ordinary persons — MAGICAL PERSONS!!!”

Ian Fleming book Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang

Source: Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964), Ch. 1

“The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same difference between a beautiful and a plain woman — a matter of millimetres.”

Ian Fleming book Goldfinger

Source: Goldfinger (1959), Ch. 8 : All To Play For

“He disagreed with something that ate him.”

Ian Fleming book Live and Let Die

Source: Live and Let Die (1954), Ch. 14

“Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.”

Ian Fleming book From Russia, with Love

Source: From Russia with Love (1957), Ch. 11 : The Soft Life

“He sat down next door in the seat she had left and watched the grim suburbs of Philadelphia showing their sores, like beggars, to the rich train.”

Ian Fleming book Live and Let Die

Source: Live and Let Die (1954), Ch. 10

“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 book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 5 : The Girl From Headquarters

“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.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 27 : The Bleeding Heart

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