Quotes by Ian Fleming

“He shrugged his shoulders to shift the pain of failure---the pain that is so much greater than the pleasure of success.”

“If you fail at the large things it means you have not large ambitions. Concentration, focus - that is all. The aptitudes come, the tools forge themselves.”

“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.”

“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 an...”

“When she had failed once or twice to respond to some conversational gambit or other, Bond also relapsed into silence and occupied himself with his own gloomy thoughts.”

“His headache was still sitting over his right eye as if it had been nailed there.”

“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.”

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

“Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.”

“You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy.”

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

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

“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 experien...”

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

“There's a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there's no Evil Book about how to be evil and how to be bad. The Devil had no prophets to write his Ten Commandments, and no ...”

“Now that little problem of yours, this business of not knowing good men from bad men and villains from heroes and so forth...There's still plenty for you to do. And you'll do it. And when you fall ...”

“Who is this man?''Chinaman, or rather half Chinese and half German. Got a daft name. Calls himself Doctor No - Doctor Julius No.''No? Spelt like Yes?''That's right.”

“Each dark conjecture came and for a moment settled like a vulture on Bond's shoulder and croaked into his ear that he had been a blind fool.”

“In angry protest the red telephone splintered the silence.”

“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 f...”