Top 92 Quotes & Sayings by Ian Fleming

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a British author Ian Fleming.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British writer, journalist and naval intelligence officer who is best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.

British - Author | May 28, 1908 - August 12, 1964

Source: Wikipedia

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

Ian Fleming

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.

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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.

Ian Fleming

This country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date..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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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.

Ian Fleming

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.

Ian Fleming

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.

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

A woman should be an illusion.

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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 dominate and the men to be nannied.

Ian Fleming

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.

Ian Fleming

A medium Vodka dry Martini - with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred.

Ian Fleming

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 no good. -- from Quantum of Solace

Ian Fleming

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.

Ian Fleming

It's no good protecting people or even looking after them past a certain point. One can't grasp more than a piece of anyone. Most of the rest can only be protected by themselves and the remainder by hired specialists and doctors and dentists and professional protectors.

Ian Fleming

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

There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page.

Ian Fleming

It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray and the bullet would never miss.

Ian Fleming

Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.

Ian Fleming

But I am greedy for life. I do too much of everything all the time. Suddenly one day my heart will fail. The Iron Crab will get me as it got my father. But I am not afraid of The Crab. At least I shall have died from an honourable disease. Perhaps they will put on my tombstone. 'This Man Died from Living Too Much'.

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

Above all, he liked it that everything was one's own fault. There was only oneself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared

Ian Fleming

The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.

Ian Fleming

Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.

Ian Fleming

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.

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards thier goal. The great scientists, the philosophers, the religious leaders - all maniacs. What else but a blind singlenee of purpose could have given focus to thier genius, would have kept them in the groove of purpose. Mania... is as priceless as genius.

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due

Ian Fleming

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 then breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils?

Ian Fleming

Everything I write has a precedent in truth.

Ian Fleming

If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain. By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you aren’t disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks.

Ian Fleming

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

He was a secret agent, and still alive thanks to his exact attention to the detail of his profession.

Ian Fleming

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

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.

Ian Fleming

It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.

Ian Fleming

I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.

Ian Fleming

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

Ian Fleming

A gentleman's choice of timepiece says as much about him as does his Saville Row suit.

Ian Fleming

Bond didn't defend the practice. He simply maintained that the more effort and ingenuity you put into gambling, the more you took out.

Ian Fleming

They want us dead,' said Bond calmly. 'So we have to stay alive.

Ian Fleming

Never say 'no' to adventures.

Ian Fleming

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.

Ian Fleming

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

Top 92 Quotes & Sayings by Ian Fleming

Related Authors