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345dab2
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Never send a man where you can send a bullet.
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Ian Fleming |
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3acddd8
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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 a..
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Ian Fleming |
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d6053ef
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James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.
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Ian Fleming |
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315bc9f
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Shooting hell out of a piece of cardboard doesn't prove anything' was his single-line introduction to the Small-arms Defence Manual.
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skill
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Ian Fleming |
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10f88e4
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The naked man who lay splayed out on his face beside the swimming pool might have been dead.
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death
james-bond
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Ian Fleming |
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318d4a0
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It should have been the Arabian Nights, but to Bond, seeing it first above the tops of trams and above the great scars of modern advertising along the river frontage, it seemed a once beautiful theatre-set that modern Turkey had thrown aside in favour of the steel and concrete flat-iron of the Istanbul-Hilton Hotel, blankly glittering behind him on the heights of Pera.
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modernization
pera
turkey
istanbul
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Ian Fleming |
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223964f
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The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture, 'The Gilded Mousetrap School' he thought it might be called, whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not.
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las-vegas
traps
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Ian Fleming |
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953fe8b
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You never get real adventures without a bit of risk somewhere.
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Ian Fleming |
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32e541b
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My dear boy', Le Chiffre spoke like a father, 'the game of Red Indians is over, quite over. You have stumbled by mischance into a game for grown-ups and you have already found it a painful experience. You are not equipped, my dear boy, to play games with adults and it very foolish of your nanny in London to have sent you out here with your spade and bucket. Very foolish indeed and most unfortunate for you.' 'But we must stop joking, my dear..
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wise-words
advice
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Ian Fleming |
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01204e8
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It was tied with a Windsor knot. Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad. Bond decided to forget his prejudice.
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Ian Fleming |
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1287ddb
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He sensed a lonely childhood on some great decaying plantation, an echoing 'Great House' slowly falling into disrepair and being encroached on by the luxuriance of the tropics. The parents dying, and the property being sold. The companionship of a servant or two and an equivocal life in lodgings in the capital. The beauty which was her only asset and the struggle against the shady propositions to be a 'governess', a 'companion', a 'secretar..
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Ian Fleming |
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82a1580
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Was it true what The Big Man had said, that she would have nothing to do with men? He doubted it. She seemed open to love and to desire. At any rate he knew she was not closed to him. He wanted her to come back and sit down opposite him again so that he could look at her and play with her and slowly discover her. Solitaire. It was an attractive name. No wonder they had christened her that in the sleazy nightclubs of Port au Prince. Even in ..
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Ian Fleming |
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6d3981a
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Bond's car was his only personal hobby. One of the last of the 4 1/2-litre Bentleys with the supercharger by Amherst Villiers, he had bought it almost new in 1933 and had kept it in careful storage through the war. It was still serviced every year and, in London, a former Bentley mechanic, who worked in a garage near Bond's Chelsea flat, tended it with jealous care.
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Ian Fleming |
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b1964fd
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Clusters of bats hung like bunches of withered grapes from the roof and when, from time to time, either Kerim's head or Bond's brushed against them, they exploded twittering into the darkness.
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darkness
tunnel
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Ian Fleming |
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b90503c
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Hm,' said Bond. 'Bogeyman stuff.
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Ian Fleming |
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499af3b
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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.
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Ian Fleming |
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323f82d
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You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy. Light a cigarette and be grateful you are still alive as you suck the smoke deep into your lungs. Your stars have already let you come quite a long way since you left your mother's womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world.
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Ian Fleming |
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0a57839
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Her breasts were showing and Mr. Player, who was a very strong Quaker, didn't think that was quite proper.
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quaker
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Ian Fleming |
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a36a30a
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He had seen how the spirit, the reserves in [Bond], could pull him out of badly damaged conditions that would have broken the normal human being. He knew how a desperate situation would bring out those reserves again, how the will to live would spring up again in a real emergency. He remembered how countless neurotic patients had disappeared for ever from his consulting rooms when the last war had broken out. The big worry had driven out th..
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war
perserverance
life-philosophy
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Ian Fleming |
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3e4f337
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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.
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Ian Fleming |
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5258f89
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For, or so they whispered, she would take the camp-stool and draw it up close below the face of the man or woman that hung down over the edge of the interrogation table. Then she would squat down on the stool and and look into the face and quietly say 'No. 1' or 'No. 10' or 'No. 25' and the inquisitors would know what she meant and they would begin. And she would watch the eyes in the face a few inches away from hers and breathe in the scre..
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pain
screams
torture
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Ian Fleming |
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467c379
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Women were for recreation. On a job, they got in the way and fogged things up with sex and hurt feelings and all the emotional baggage they carried around. One had to look out for them and take care of them.
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Ian Fleming |
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c0f9cf1
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Follow your fate, and be satisfied with it, and be glad not to be a second-hand motor salesman, or a yellow-press journalist, pickled in gin and nicotine, or a cripple - or dead.
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fate
nicotine
gin
journalist
jobs
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Ian Fleming |
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552c244
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From the first, Istanbul had given him the impression of a town where, with the night, horror creeps out of the stones. It seemed to him a town the centuries had so drenched in blood and violence that, when daylight went out, the ghosts of its dead were its only population.
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death
turkey
istanbul
night
horror
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Ian Fleming |
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a779d7c
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I'm getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good LeChiffre. 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 gon..
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Ian Fleming |
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cefaf81
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No, when the stresses are too great for the tired metal, when the ground mechanic who checks the de-icing equipment is crossed in love and skimps his job, way back in London, Idlewild, Gander, Montreal; when those or many things happen, then the little warm room with propellers in front falls straight down out of the sky into the sea or on to the land, heavier than air, fallible, vain. And the forty little heavier-than-air people, fallible ..
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Ian Fleming |
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bf73665
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In angry protest the red telephone splintered the silence.
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telephone
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Ian Fleming |
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48496c6
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power is the goal of all ambition,
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Ian Fleming |
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12b89f1
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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.
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Ian Fleming |
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13f2754
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Bond liked fast cars and he liked driving them. Most American cars bored him. They lacked personality and the patina of individual craftsmanship that European cars have.
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Ian Fleming |
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1367c5b
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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.
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cards
cheaters
elegance
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Ian Fleming |
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9d23304
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I was just running away from the person I'd been for the past five years. I wasn't particularly pleased with the person I was now, but I had hated and despised the other one, and I was glad to be rid of her face.
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james-bond
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Ian Fleming |
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f073e53
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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.
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Ian Fleming |
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6c04042
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Don't lose faith in your stars.
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Ian Fleming |
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3765ab9
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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.
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Ian Fleming |
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24c716c
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The double 0 numerals signify an agent who has killed and who is privileged to kill on active service.
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Ian Fleming |
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cbe5843
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Damn you," said Bond. "You..." She put her hand over his mouth. "'Allumeuse' is the nice word for it," she said. "It is fun for me to be able to tease such a strong silent man. You burn with such an angry flame. It is the only game I have to play with you and I shan't be able to play it for long. How many days until your hand is well again?" Bond bit hard into the soft hand over his mouth. She gave a little scream. "Not many," said Bond. "A..
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Ian Fleming |
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2eaffae
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He found something grisly in the inevitability of the pattern of each affair. 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. Even more he shunned the 'mise-en-scene' for each of these acts in the play - the meeting at a party, the..
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Ian Fleming |
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46051b8
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You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face.
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Ian Fleming |
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7ea3f08
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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 maliciou..
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Ian Fleming |
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2dbab46
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Bond looked at the beautiful day and smiled. And no man, not even Mr. Big, would have liked the expression on his face.
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ominous
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Ian Fleming |
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756798b
|
I should spend the money quickly, Commander Bond.
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Ian Fleming |
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267ae7b
|
They sat for a time listening to the music and then Bond turned to Vesper: 'It's wonderful sitting here with you and knowing the job's finished. It's a lovely end to the day - the prize-giving.' He expected her to smile. She said: 'Yes, isn't it,' in a rather brittle voice. She seemed to be listening carefully to the music. One elbow rested on the table and her hand supported her chin, but on the back of her hand and not on the palm, and Bo..
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Ian Fleming |
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2ef0ff0
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I'm behaving like a pig,' she said happily. 'You always give me all the things I like best. I've never been so spoiled before.' She gazed across the terrace at the moonlit bay. 'I wish I deserved it.' Her voice had a wry undertone. 'What do you mean?' asked Bond surprised. 'Oh, I don't know. I suppose people get what they deserve, so perhaps I do deserve it.' She looked at him and smiled. Her eyes narrowed quizzically. 'You really don't kno..
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Ian Fleming |