Quotes from Ian Fleming

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

I'm looking for Commander James Bond, not an overgrown stunt man. [on meeting Sean Connery]

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.

Our prisons are full of people who think they're Napoleon..or God.

History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.

Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.

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.

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

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

Never job backwards. What might have been was a waste of time.

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

A woman should be an illusion.

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

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.

You can get far in North America with laconic grunts. "Huh," "hun," and "hi!" in their various modulations, together with "sure," "guess so," "that so?" and "nuts!" will meet almost any contingency.

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.

All women love semi-rape. They love to be taken.It was his sweet brutality against my bruised body that made his act of love so piercingly wonderful.

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.

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.

Everything I write has a precedent in truth.

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

Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.

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