Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
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.
Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due
Never say ‘no’ to adventures.
You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.
Older women are best because they always think they may be doing it for the last time.
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.
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.
Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.
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.
It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.
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.
The gain to the winner is always less than the loss to the loser.
Everyone has the revolver of resignation in his pocket.
A woman can put up with almost anything; anything but indifference.
They want us dead,’ said Bond calmly. ‘So we have to stay alive.
Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.
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.
If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn’t arrive.
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.
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
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.
Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.
