Ian Fleming

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

“One of the bibles of my youth was 'Birds of the West Indies,' by James Bond, a well-known ornithologist, and when I was casting about for a name for my protagonist I thought, 'My God, that's the dullest name I've ever heard,' so I appropriated it. Now the dullest name in the world has become an exci...”

“I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn’t care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn’t care, because none of them would ever own him—o...”

“I don't regard James Bond precisely as a hero, but at least he does get on and do his duty, in an extremely corny way.”

“As a result of 50 years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits... the women wanting to dominat...”

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

“Men want a woman whom they can turn on and off like a light switch.”

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

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

“As for sex, well, I mean sex is a perfectly respectable subject as far as Shakespeare is concerned. I mean, all history is love and violence.”

“I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.”

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

“This country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date.. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”

“Older women are best, because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.”

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

“I think it's the same with all the relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn't care if the other is alive or dead, then it's just n...”

“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.”

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

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

“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 and the final bitterness--was to him shameful and hypocritical.”

“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.”

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

“I was just on the edge of getting married, and I was frenzied at the prospect of this great step in my life after having been a bachelor for so long. And I really wanted to take my mind off of the agony, and so I decided to sit down and write a book.”

“Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, 'Casino Royale' dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired.”

“People do connect me with James Bond simply because I happen to like scrambled eggs and short-sleeved shirts and some of the things that James Bond does, but I certainly haven't got his guts nor his very lively appetites.”