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Great passages & quotes from the Fleming novels...
Feel free to share some of your favorite quotes from the Fleming novels.
As I roll through the Fleming Bond series of books once more, I'll be extracting my favorite quotes and posting them here. For starters, here are a couple from LIVE AND LET DIE:
"There are moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent. There are assignments on which he is required to act the part of a very rich man; occasions when he takes refuge in good living to efface the memory of danger and the shadow of death…" -- Another fantastic Fleming opening.
“You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy. Light a cigarette and be grateful you are still alive as you suck the smoke deep into your lungs. Your stars have already let you come quite a long way since you left your mother’s womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world … Don’t lose faith in your stars.” -- Bond reflecting on life during his shaky ride to Jamaica. I almost wanted to head to the store, purchase a pack of smokes and light up after re-reading that page.
As I roll through the Fleming Bond series of books once more, I'll be extracting my favorite quotes and posting them here. For starters, here are a couple from LIVE AND LET DIE:
"There are moments of great luxury in the life of a secret agent. There are assignments on which he is required to act the part of a very rich man; occasions when he takes refuge in good living to efface the memory of danger and the shadow of death…" -- Another fantastic Fleming opening.
“You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy. Light a cigarette and be grateful you are still alive as you suck the smoke deep into your lungs. Your stars have already let you come quite a long way since you left your mother’s womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world … Don’t lose faith in your stars.” -- Bond reflecting on life during his shaky ride to Jamaica. I almost wanted to head to the store, purchase a pack of smokes and light up after re-reading that page.
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It's really great.
“[...] There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of people who are least good, or our own intuintion.
“So,” continued Bond, warming to his argument, “Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which I foolishly helped to destroy, he was creating a normal of badness by which, and by which alone, an oppostie norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness and we emerge from the acquaintanceship better and more virtuous men.”
^:)^
And @Brady, I love that passage.
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2503304-casino-royale
Eight years to go before he was automatically taken off the 00 list and given a staff job at Headquarters. At least eight tough assignments. Probably sixteen. Perhaps twenty-four. Too many.
Seems like Bond is overachieving... Big surprise here. ;)
So, regarding the films- if we include the separate PTS missions, filmBond has already completed more missions than Fleming envisioned for novelBond.
""It was one of those days when it seemed to James Bond that all life, as someone put it, was nothing but a heap of six to four against." (Thunderball)
"The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling -- a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension -- becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.
"James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired." (Casino Royale)
"The safe, empty room sneered at him." (Casino Royale)
"It turned out that Leiter was from Texas. While he talked on about his job with the Joint Intelligence Staff on NATO and the difficulty of maintaining security in an organization where so many nationalities were represented, Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas." (Casino Royale)
"There was no hint of apology in Bond's face. It wasn't M who was going to have to do the work that evening. Bond knew what he was doing. Whenever he had a job of work to do he would take infinite pains beforehand and leave as little as possible to chance. Then if something went wrong it was the unforeseeable. For that he accepted no responsibility." (Moonraker)
“Luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared. Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact he would be brought to his knees by love or by luck.” (Casino Royale)
"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.” (Casino Royale)
“I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.” (Goldfinger)
“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'." (From Russia With Love)
“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." (Quantum Of Solace)
“You only live twice:
Once when you're born
And once when you look death in the face.” (You Only Live Twice)
“Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.” (Casino Royale)
"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." (You Only Live Twice)
That one is great but I love Mathis' response that culminated with the fantastic:
I think this alone explains a lot about Bond.
"This is 007 speaking. This is an open line. It's an emergency. Can you hear me? Pass this on at once. 3030 was a double, working for Redland.
"Yes, dammit, I said 'was'. The bitch is dead now."
"His fingernails dug into the palms of his hands and his body sweated with shame.
"Well, it was not too late. Here was a target for him, right to hand. He would take on SMERSH and hunt it down. Without SMERSH, without this cold weapon of death and revenge, the MWD would be just another bunch of civil servant spies, no better or worse than any of the western services.
"It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than to retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray, and the bullet would never miss.
"But now he would attack the arm that held the whip and the gun. The business of espionage could be left to the white-collar boys. They could spy, and catch the spies. He would go after the threat behind the spies, the threat that made them spy."
Casino Royale
Honey saying something to James like, "You promised me: slave time."
... and left to our imagination, a happy and steamy ending ensues.
Anybody have the book right there to give me the correct quote? If so, thank you!
"Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the centre of them. When one gets there the result is unrewarding, but the process is instructive and entertaining."
The skin beneath the eyes that now slowly, mildly, surveyed his colleagues was unpouched. There was no sign of debauchery, illness, or old age on the large, white, bland face under the square, wiry black crew-cut The jawline, going on the appropriate middle-aged fat of authority, showed decision and independence. Only the mouth under a heavy, squat nose, marred what might have been the face of a philosopher or a scientist. Proud and thin, like a badly-healed wound, the compressed, dark lips, capable of only false, ugly smiles, suggested contempt, tyranny, and cruelty. But to an almost Shakespearian degree. Nothing about Blofeld was small.''
Sure, one cannot use narrative like those ones in a movie, and good luck finding an actor looking like the novel's Blofeld, but nobody ever tell me Blofeld has just been spoofed too many times.
"One cannot seriously drink in French cafes. Out of doors on a pavement in the sun is no place for vodka or whiskey or gin...and a bottle of indifferent champagne is a bad foundation for the night."
"For the soda he always stipulated Perrier, for in his opinion expensive soda water was the cheapest way to improve a poor drink"
From a View to a Kill is an endless source of good quotes, considering it's a short story. In the same paragraph as the quote you made lies one of my favourite lines:
"Pernod is possible, but it should be drunk in company, and anyway Bond had never liked the stuff because its liquorice taste reminded him of his childhood."
I think this seemingly unimportant line says a lot about Bond. Besides, I happen to like the taste of liquorice very much.
From GOLDFINGER
"Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, third time is enemy action."
Agreed. Fleming is a bona fide literary genius, just like Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Poe. But because of the genre in which he worked, he will never receive that sort of approbation.
"You only live twice: once when you're born, and once when you look death in the face".
Only problem is, that second one Bond has done far more often ;-)
The opening paragraph of the chapter when Grant reveals his true identity has Bond in one of the tightest spots ever against the chief executioner of SMERSH and is one of his most tension filled passages.
What a great line. So clever.
"Nowadays, said Mr. Krest, there were only 3 powers - America, Russia and China. That was the big poker game, and no other country had the chips or the cards to come to it."
Krest: "One of those two-pound tins from Hammacher Schlemmer - the grade 10 shot size, and all the trimmings. And that pink Champagne. (He turned to Bond) That suit you feller?"
Bond: "Sounds like a square meal'"
"'I don't need a lecture on the qualities of the Swiss, thank you, 007. At last they keep their trains clean and cope with the beatnik problem."
"Bond suddenly thought, 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. She'd let me go on with my life. She's a lone girl, not cluttered up with friends, relations, belongings."
"'Afternoon James'. (He had the sailor's meticulous observance of the exact midday). 'Happy Christmas and all that. Take a chair'"
"Medals are so often just the badges of good luck. If I am a hero, it is for the things for which no medals are awarded."
"Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due"
"He simply put them in the category of 'bad news'"
"Now through a mixture of romantic quixotry and sheer folly he had lost it (money). Well, he shrugged, he had asked for a night to remember"