"You only live twice:
Once when you're born
And once when you look death in the face."
— Ian Fleming (You Only Live Twice)

"Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.'"
— Ian Fleming

"Surround yourself with human beings. They are easier to fight for than principles"
— Ian Fleming

""Names Bond, James Bond.""
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"'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 (Casino Royale)

"Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behavior and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a mouthful of smoldering straw than breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils?"
— Ian Fleming (Goldfinger)

"Once is happenstance.
Twice is coincidence.
Three times is enemy action."
— Ian Fleming

"It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world."
— Ian Fleming (Goldfinger)

"Bond always mistrusted short men. They grew up from childhood with an inferiority complex. All their lives they would strive to be big - bigger than the others who had teased them as a child. Napoleon had been short, and Hitler. It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world."
— Ian Fleming

"Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas."
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"I am a poet in deeds--not often in words."
— Ian Fleming (Goldfinger)

"Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket."
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"Orbis non sufficit. [The world is not enough]"
— Ian Fleming (On Her Majesty's Secret Service)

"He was a secret agent, and still alive thanks to his exact attention to the detail of his profession. "
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"He shrugged his shoulders to shift the pain of failure---the pain that is so much greater than the pleasure of success."
— Ian Fleming (Moonraker)

"`And don't get hurt,' [Dexter] added. `There's no one to help you up there. And don't go stirring up a lot of trouble for us. This case isn't ripe yet. Until it is, our policy with Mr Big is ``live and let live''.'

Bond looked quizzically at Captain Dexter

`In my job,' he said, `when I come up against a man like this one, I have another motto. It's ``live and let die''.'"
— Ian Fleming

"...Goldfinger could not have known that high tension was Bond's natural way of life and that pressure and danger relaxed him."
— Ian Fleming (Goldfinger)

"Just as, at least in one religion, accidia is the first of the cardinal sins, so bordom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned."
— Ian Fleming (From Russia With Love)

"The gain to the winner is always less than the loss to the loser."
— Ian Fleming (Live and Let Die)

"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 (Diamonds Are Forever)

"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 (Casino Royale)

"Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment."
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"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."
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"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 (Goldfinger)

"In their talk there was nothing but companionship with a distant undertone of passion. In the background there was the unspoken zest of the promise which, in due course and in their own time, would be met."
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other."
— Ian Fleming (Diamonds Are Forever)

""It reads better than it lives""
— Ian Fleming (Diamonds Are Forever)

"I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much."
— Ian Fleming

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

"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."
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference."
— Ian Fleming

""Look my friend, I've got to commit a murder tonight. Not you. Me. So be a good chap and stuff it, would you?" "
— Ian Fleming (Octopussy and The Living Daylights)

"The bitch is dead now."
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"'A dry Martini,' Bond said. 'In a deep champagne goblet. 3 measures of Gordon's, 1 of vodka, 1/2 a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice cold, then add a thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?'"
— Ian Fleming (Casino Royale)

"And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger."
— Ian Fleming (Moonraker)

"'They want us dead,' said Bond calmly. 'So we have to stay alive.'"
— Ian Fleming (Moonraker)

"'Hm,' said Bond. 'Bogeyman stuff.'"
— Ian Fleming

"'Hm,' said Bond. 'Bogeyman stuff.'"
— Ian Fleming

"Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it."
— Ian Fleming (The Spy Who Loved Me)

"Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the death of it."
— Ian Fleming (The Spy Who Loved Me)