Quote

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.

Ian Fleming

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Ian Fleming
Age: 55 †
Born: 1908
Born: December 28
Died: 1964
Died: August 12
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Prosaist
Sailor
Screenwriter
Writer
Mayfair
London
Ian Lancaster Fleming
Takes
Englishmen
Results
Centre
Process
Odd
Long
Entertaining
Time
Boxes
Like
Chinese
Instructive
Result
Nest
Gets
Nests

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Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.
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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.
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You can get far in North America with laconic grunts. Huh, hun, and hi! in their various modulations, together with sure, guess so, that so? and nuts! will meet almost any contingency.
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Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it.
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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.
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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'.
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It reads better than it lives
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He could not just wear a watch. It had to be a Rolex.
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And people with obsessions, reflected Bond, were blind to danger.
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Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.
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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.
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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.
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I am a poet in deeds--not often in words.
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A woman should be an illusion
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A dry martini,' he said. 'One. In a deep champagne goblet.' ... Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?
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And then one day when you're playing your little game you'll suddenly find yourself pinned down like a butterfly.
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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.
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Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due
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Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.
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