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
Result
Nest
Gets
Nests
Takes
Englishmen
Results
Centre
Process
Odd
Long
Entertaining
Time
Boxes
Like
Chinese
Instructive

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My mental hands were empty, and I felt I must do something as a counterirritant or antibody to my hysterical alarm at getting married at the age of 43.
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These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men.
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Like all harsh, cold men, he was easily tipped over into sentiment.
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As for sex, well, I mean sex is a perfectly respectable subject as far as Shakespeare is concerned. I mean, all history is love and violence.
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A woman can put up with almost anything anything but indifference.
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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.
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Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due
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If I wait for the genius to come, it just doesn't arrive.
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Our prisons are full of people who think they're Napoleon..or God.
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It was the short men that caused all the trouble in the world.
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Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.
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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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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.
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Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
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Everything I write has a precedent in truth.
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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.
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Bond didn't defend the practice. He simply maintained that the more effort and ingenuity you put into gambling, the more you took out.
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You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.
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A woman should be an illusion
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