Ian Fleming Quotes

I always make it a rule never to look back. Otherwise, I’d ask myself how I could write such piffle and live with myself, day after day.

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.

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

Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.

You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.

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

A horse is dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle.

If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn’t arrive.

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

The gain to the winner is always less than the loss to the loser.

This country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date..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

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

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 exciting one.

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

A woman should be an illusion.

Never say ‘no’ to adventures.

I’m not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.

When I wrote the first [Bond novel] in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened… when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard.

Most marriages don’t add two people together. They subtract one from the other.

Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.

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

Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.

Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.

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.

A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference.