On Her Majesty's Secret Service (James Bond, #11)

by Ian Fleming

What a long time ago they were, those spade-and-bucket days! How far he had come since the freckles and the Cadbury milk-chocolate Flakes and the fizzy lemonade!

On the theory that worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due, he consciously relaxed his muscles and emptied his mind of questions.

When the odds are hopeless, when all seems to be lost, then is the time to be calm, to make a show of authority – at least of indifference.

If there was one thing that set James Bond really moving in life, with the exception of gun-play, it was being passed at speed by a pretty girl; and it was his experience that girls who drove competitively like that were always pretty – and exciting.

That the cards have no memory and that it was time for them to run. And each time, as did the other players, he went down on the third coup.

‘My name is Bond, James Bond. Please stay alive, at any rate for tonight.’

All cats are grey in the dark. True or false?

In some way this girl had come to the end of her tether, of too many tethers.

Herkos Odonton.

“the hedge of the teeth

They burn the heart out of themselves by living too greedily, and suddenly they examine their lives and see that they are worthless. They have had everything, eaten all the sweets of life at one great banquet, and there is nothing left.

What a splendid trap snobbery was! How right Sable Basilisk had been! There is a snob in all of us and only through snobbery could Bond have discovered who the parents of this woman were.

Hell! I’ll never find another girl like this one. She’s got everything I’ve looked for in a woman, She’s beautiful, in bed and out. She’s adventurous, brave, resourceful. She’s exciting always. She seems to love me.

Only he could do the cleaning up. It was written in his stars!

‘Alas, since Waterloo, one can never underestimate the English.’

I must stop being happy and be clever instead.

Medals are so often just the badges of good luck.