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"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"
"I don't think you'll be able to do much spanking after living on nuts and lemon juice for two weeks James" (Moneypenny)
"At the same time, he knew, deep down, that love from Mary Goodnight, or from any woman, was not enough for him. It would be like taking 'a room with a view'. For James Bond, the same view would always pall."
"Mary Goodnight came through the door. Despite the Jamaican heat, she was looking fresh as a rose. Damn her"
"Oh James! It's tremendous! (Mary Goodnight) "I know. Free luncheon every second Friday. Key to M's personal lavatory" (Bond)
A View To A Kill?
"Regret was unprofessional - worse it was death-watch beetle in the soul"
"Champagne and Benzedrine! Never again."
Casino Royale, I think.
from the epic golf match,as Bond and GF stroll down the wide open expanse of the fairway.
Bond's many digs at the villains cause me much amusement. GF novel was a treasure trove for such nuggets. The equally humourless GF and Oddjob endure much abuse at the expense of Bond's wit.
I also like Fleming's dissertation on women drivers from TB.
Fleming's most provocative and un-pc stuff is generaly gold, at least as entertaining prose.
"And now what? wondered Bond. He shrugged his shoulders to shift the pain of failure - the pain of failure that is so much greater than the pleasure of success. The exit line. He must get out of these two young lives and take his cold heart elsewhere. There must be no regrets. No false sentiment. He must play the role which she expected of him. The tough man of the world. The Secret Agent. The man who was only a silhouette."
Fantastic quote.
Indeed. That may be Fleming's finest conclusion. Heartbreaking.
And the same can be said for YOLT.
Indeed it is. Very inspiring and it sums up the literary Bond's murky spy world very well, despite Fleming seemingly being so dismissive of his creation.
'Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored'
Agreed, read that one recently as I was looking at the passages on Captain Troop for a piece I'm writing.
After Euripedes. I'm sure Fleming's classical British education was superb.
Or as Enoch Powell put it in his 1968 'Rivers of Blood' speech:
"Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad."
Aaah...love that quote :)
A few I noted the last time I read them:
"When the bomb falls. When the pilot miscalculates and the plane hits short of the runway. When the blood leaves the heart and conciousness goes, there are thoughts in the mind, or words, or perhaps a phrase of music, which ring on for the few seconds before death like the dying clang of a bell" Moonraker
"Paw-Paw with a slice of green lime, a dish piled with red bananas, purple star-apples and tangerines, scrambled eggs and bacon, Blue Mountain coffee - the most delicious in the world Jamaican marmalade, almost black, and guava jelly.
As Bond, wearing shorts and sandals, had his breakfast on the veranda and gazed down on the sunlit panorama of Kingston and Port Royal, he thought how lucky he was and what wonderful moments of consolation there were for the darkness and danger of his profession" Dr No.
"There's nothing you can do about it. 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 deep smoke into your lungs" Dr No
Thanks, yes, it is the best for me too!
Yes, Fleming was a very distinctive writer. What's missing are his wonderful mini-essays.
The funny thing is that while I read Fleming his style never struck me as better then other writers. It's only when you read work of others you find yourself missing something. When I start reading Fleming I just can't put the book down, whereas with most other writers I can. I guess the intensity of the writing, so clearly visible in Dragonpol's quote, does that. When I finally read two of the follow-up books, Carte Blanche and the horrific Devil May Care, I was deeply let down. Those were at best to Robert Ludlum's standards and hence had very little to do with Bond (except for the main character of course).
Yes, that is indeed a very powerful quote indeed. As I say I posted under the moniker SILHOUETTE MAN from 10 May 2002 until May 2013. The last two continuations were not as good as that which came before - you should give the John Gardner novels a try as he often comes close to Fleming's style, as does Kingsley Amis with Colonel Sun.
I'm not quite sure I want to try it one more time. But perhaps. Still it would read too much as 'wannabe' than the real deal, wouldn't it? Actually the only book that I ever read, written as a follow-up to another man's writings that really was done extremely well is part six in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', 'And another thing...' by Eoin Colfer. But with such a name you could've seen that coming.
It is the most difficult thing to adapt in the movies, Fleming's prose.
Sadly this is all too true. I think it was Simon Winder who said that Fleming did everything well in literary terms that film could never hope to do in cinematic terms and therein lies the problem. I think there's a great deal in this. For instance, how do you recreate all the sights and sounds of Blofeld's suicide garden in Japan? The answer is, you probably can't, not with Eon anyway.
Perhaps only 'Red' Grant, Colonel Rosa Klebb, Auric Goldfinger and Irma Bunt were properly cast in the Bond films, then.
To be honest some were impossible to cast faithfully. Dr. No for instance. I think Joseph Wiseman made a miraculous job playing the character.
Yes, but as O.F. Snelling noted in his book on the Bonds novels, he made him a character imbued with 1960s modernity rather than a new version of Dr Fu Manchu.
And I'm sure Fleming approved. Julius No, from a physical standpoint, is one of Fleming's most memorable characters, and I am amazed how closely Wiseman resembled him in the film. It was a stroke of casting brilliance and a dam' fine job of acting.
But getting back to Fleming, as far as I am concerned no writer in history can touch him when it comes to describing a human being. His literary portraits are flabbergasting. They belong in the Louvre.
Tiger dutifully mentions Bunt being too ugly to live, virtually every time he mentions her. That was a sure tip to we the "dear reader" that Tiger was indeed describing Bunt.
The description of Klebb's epic ugliness goes on for paragraphs, and then he dresses her up in a party dress, which terrifies Tatiana, causing her to run screaming from the room. :))
He wasn't too flattering to the pathetic Maria Freudenstein either.
In Fleming's world, inner-ugly often manifests on the outside too.
It's this sort of eccentricty of writing that gives Fleming's stories much of their charm.
He has fun with his writing. Damn the lit snobs.