You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy.
Each day the atmosphere became more hateful. It seemed fantastic to Bond that human relationships could collapse into dust overnight and he searched his mind again and again for a reason.
What a man! He certainly seems to have the run of this country. Just shows how one can push a democracy around, what with habeas corpus and human rights and all the rest. Glad we haven't got him on our hands in England.
He says that courage is a capital sum reduced by expenditure.
Bond swallowed. He looked over towards Vesper. Felix Leiter was again standing beside her. He grinned slightly and Bond smiled back and raised his hand from the table in a small gesture of benediction.
Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity.
For the first time since his capture, fear came to Bond and crawled up his spine.
On these things he spent all his money and it was his ambition to have as little as possible in his banking account when he was killed, as, when he was depressed, he knew he would be, before the statutory age of forty-five.
I've found that one must try and teach people that there's no top limit to disaster-that, so long as breath remains in your body, you've got accept the miseries of life. They will often seem infinite, insupportable. They are part of the human condition.
Because people are very careful with the secrets of their own business doesn't mean that they'll be careful with the secrets of yours.
A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference.
The man who was only a silhouette.
Slowly the red dawn broke over the endless plain of black grass that gradually turned to the famous Kentucky blue as the sun ironed out the shadows.
It was tied with a Windsor knot. Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad. Bond decided to forget his prejudice.
All concierges are venal. It is not their fault. They are trained to regard all hotel guests except maharajahs as potential cheats and thieves. They have as much concern for your comfort or well-being as crocodiles.
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.
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.
Mr Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action'.
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.
So you're going to Las Vegas,' said Bond. ‘Funny coincidence department.' He told Leiter about his conversation with Shady Tree. ‘Sure,' said Leiter. ‘No coincidence about it. We're both travelling bad roads and all bad roads lead to the bad town.
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.
I don't care the hell what other people eat so long as they enjoy it. I can't stand sad eaters and sad drinkers.
Bond sat down on his rumpled bed and lost himself in drink and gloomy reflections.
I expect because I think I can handle life better on my own. Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.
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.
Certainly, Effendi,' the man bowed Bond to the lift. ‘But alas the plumbers are in your former room. The water supply . . .' the voice trailed away. The lift rose about ten feet and stopped at the first floor. Well, the story of the plumbers makes sense, reflected Bond. And, after all, there was no harm in having the best room in the hotel.
Bond liked fast cars and he liked driving them. Most American cars bored him. They lacked personality and the patina of individual craftsmanship that European cars have.
Bond didn't defend the practice. He simply maintained that the more effort and ingenuity you put into gambling, the more you took out.
It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.
Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Dissipation.
You see,' he said, still looking down at his bandages, ‘when one's young, it seems very easy to distinguish between right and wrong, but as one gets older it becomes more difficult. At school it's easy to pick out one's own villains and heroes and one grows up wanting to be a hero and kill the villains.' He looked obstinately at Mathis.
And now that you have seen a really evil man, you will know how evil they can be and you will go after them to destroy them in order to protect yourself and the people you love. You won't wait to argue about it. You know what they look like now and what they can do to people.
The safe, empty room sneered at him.
Push dem under the doors,' he said. ‘Ah cain't do nuthen else. Git mah throat cut. But Ah don' like any foolin' aroun' wid da customers 'n my cyar. Nossuh.
For her, sex was nothing more than an itch. And this phsychological and physiological neutrality of hers at once relieved her of so many human emotions and sentiments and desires. Sexual neutrality was the essence of coldness in an individual. It was a great and wonderful thing to be born with.
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.
I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions do anything, particularly when they taste bad.
And of course, Japan, with the highest suicide statistics in the world, a country with an unquenchable thirst for the bizarre, the cruel and the terrible, would provide the perfect last refuge for him.
There was a sharp ‘phut', no louder than a bubble of air escaping from a tube of toothpaste. No other noise at all, and suddenly Le Chiffre had grown another eye, a third eye on a level with the other two, right where the thick nose started to jut out below the forehead. It was a small black eye, without eyelashes or eyebrows.
Never say ‘no' to adventures. Always say ‘yes,' otherwise you'll lead a very dull life.
Leiter chuckled and reached in his left-hand pocket for a dime as they came to the Henry Hudson Bridge toll.
There might be cheats or possible cheats amongst them, men who beat their wives, men with perverse instincts, greedy men, cowardly men, lying men; but the elegance of the room invested each one with a kind of aristocracy.
And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger.
I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition.
It reads better than it lives.
He's not a bad guy really, except he's so crooked, you shake hands with him you better count your fingers afterwards.
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.
How soon Mathis had been proved right and how soon his own little sophistries had been exploded in his face!
It was as if Goldfinger had been put together with bits of other people's bodies.
