Fleming Quotes & Sayings

Honestly, not being evasive, but the great thing about Bond is that I have fifty years of movies - 23 movies and all the Ian Fleming novels and short stories, all of which are fodder. And when I'm working on the new Bond, I'm constantly going back to Fleming and the other movies - what are the bits and pieces, what are the resonances? — John Logan

That was six years ago. We can't keep turning our backs on chances to live or...at least stop denying ourselves pleasure. — Ally Fleming

You finally have to learn to pull all the different kinds of teaching and training and coaching together on you own, so that your voice and body and technique for a sound that is consistent and solid. — Renee Fleming

Among the important realizations I had in my own days in the practice room was that if any one route to any one phrase didn't work after days of trying, then the exact opposite route should at least be explored, as well as every alternative in between, as counterintuitive as that often seemed. — Renee Fleming

Inside the (Domestic) Sphere women did things which weren't too demanding like childcare, scrubbing the floor, washing the sheets and curtains, sewing on buttons, and coalmining. — Jacky Fleming

You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face — Ian Fleming

The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture, 'The Gilded Mousetrap School' he thought it might be called, whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not. — Ian Fleming

In my first publication I might have claimed that I had come to the conclusion, as a result of serious study of the literature and deep thought, that valuable antibacterial substances were made by moulds and that I set out to investigate the problem. That would have been untrue and I preferred to tell the truth that penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist. My publication in 1929 was the starting-point of the work of others who developed penicillin especially in the chemical field. — Alexander Fleming

She seemed to Bond to give a quick involuntary shrug of the shoulders as she spoke, but then she leant impulsively towards him. 'I have some news for you from Mathis. He was longing to tell you himself. It's about the bomb. It's a fantastic story. — Ian Fleming

It never ceases to amaze me how many folks jump right over "I'll try" to "I can't. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

Just as, at least in one religion, accidia is the first of the cardinal sins, so bordom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned. — Ian Fleming

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. — Ian Fleming

Shooting hell out of a piece of cardboard doesn't prove anything' was his single-line introduction to the Small-arms Defence Manual. — Ian Fleming

I think skating helped me find myself. — Peggy Fleming

I have had a very difficult time with stage fright; it undermines your well-being and peace of mind, and it can also threaten your livelihood. — Renee Fleming

When I was on the ice, in the lights, with the music and the motion, there was a certain kind of flirtation that gave great energy and expressiveness to my performance. — Peggy Fleming

I think singing is one of the most natural things that human beings do, but it's difficult. — Renee Fleming

I'm not in the Shakespeare stakes. I have no ambition. — Ian Fleming

Americans who want to perform in Europe face a cultural and vocal uphill battle. We're considered good students, very professional and often technically sound; but though there are droves of us to choose from, a European singer is almost always going to be the first choice of a European company - and often, of an American company as well. — Renee Fleming

While it's a fact that a voice begins with natural talent, any talent must be nurtured, cajoled, wrestled with pampered, challenged, and, at every turn, examined. — Renee Fleming

ordeal, remember — Leah Fleming

Love is a very intense and strong emotion, and it'll make you do some weird things. But I'm always for love, and I think when you find something really special, you need to do whatever you have to do to hold onto it. — Shaun Fleming

Bond closed his eyes and mentally explored his body. The worst pain was in his wrists and ankles and in his right hand where the Russian had cut him. In the centre of the body there was no feeling. He assumed that he had been given a local anaesthetic. The rest of his body ached dully as if he had been beaten all over. He could feel the pressure of bandages everywhere and his unshaven neck and chin prickled against the sheets. From the feel of the bristles he knew that he must have been at least three days without shaving. That meant two days since the morning of the torture. — Ian Fleming

Music was language in our house. It was air ... I feel certain that if I absorbed any lessons at all in the first months and years of my life, they must have been about the work that went into making a beautiful sound. — Renee Fleming

Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality.' As a result of fifty 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
barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them. — Ian Fleming

When I sing, the sound is a totally different range, color, all of it. It's all about the breath. You take in a breath and you make a sound. — Renee Fleming

The first Bond movie I saw at cinemas was 'For Your Eyes Only' when I was almost 10. I got into the Fleming books after watching 'A View To A Kill' a few years later. — Stephen Cole

'Those who deserve to die, he paused, 'die the death they deserve' - Mr Big — Ian Fleming

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. — Ian Fleming

Garch a har?" -Oddjob, Goldfinger — Ian Fleming

Every end justifies the means? - No! The end justifies all the means? - No! Every end justifies all the means? - No, never!" - Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel — Preston Fleming

The unprepared mind cannot see the outstretched hand of opportunity. — Alexander Fleming

I want to keep my voice young, with nothing heavy. — Renee Fleming

He tells them he and his wife are keeping the baby, because it's the last link to their little girl or some cowpuckie like that. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

Ever heard of "The House of Diamonds"? — Ian Fleming

No king or minister could have instructed Newton to discover the law of gravity, for they did not know and could not know that there was such a law to discover. No Treasury official told Fleming to discover penicillin. Nor was Rutherford instructed to split the atom by a certain date ... — C. Northcote Parkinson

Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselves wanting that feeling for real. They want men to adore them like Lloyd Dobler would, and they want women to think like Aimee Mann, and they expect all their arguments to sound like Sam Malone and Diane Chambers. They think everything will work out perfectly in the end (just like it did for Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones and Nick Hornby's Rob Fleming), and they don't stop believing because Journey's Steve Perry insists we should never do that. — Chuck Klosterman

Your second choice is to give me the chance to be everything you want in a husband and father. I want us to be a family, Ruby. I want to grow with you, learn with you, be with you. I want to love you and our baby, but whichever option you choose I want to be near this child forever. I'm done running from love. I've found it in you and I'm here to stay. I love you, Ruby Fleming."
-- Christo — Barbara DeLeo

So much can be gained from watching other singers, seeing what they do and what they don't do, seeing how they look when they breathe, how wide they open their mouths for a high note. — Renee Fleming

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action — Ian Fleming

If Carl Hiaasen and Donald Westlake had a literary love child, he would be Timothy Hallinan. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behavior and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a mouthful of smoldering straw then breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils? — Ian Fleming

Having to travel so much plays havoc with your personal life. — Renee Fleming

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. — Ian Fleming

O lovely O most charming pug Thy gracefull air and heavenly mug ... His noses cast is of the roman He is a very pretty weoman I could not get a rhyme for roman And was obliged to call it weoman. — Marjorie Fleming

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success — Ian Fleming

I do believe I'm tight,' she said, 'how disgraceful. Please, James, don't be ashamed of me. I did so want to be gay. And I am gay. — Ian Fleming

My whole career I played these girls sort of 18 to 23. — Renee Fleming

We were the daughters of the post-World War II American dream, the daughters of those idealized fifties sitcom families in which father knew best and mother knew her place and a kind of disappointment, and tense, unspoken sexuality rattled around like ice cubes in their nightly cocktails. — Anne Taylor Fleming

I was constantly being pushed toward a European ideal of what it means to be a classical or opera singer, let's say in the Renata Tebaldi mode. I reject that. — Renee Fleming

Put that in your pipe and smoke it. — Ian Fleming

They had a table near the rail round the huge floor. Bond was spellbound. He found many of the girls very beautiful. The music hammered its way into his pulse until he almost forgot what he was there for. — Ian Fleming

There might be cheats or possible cheats amongst them, men who beat their wives, men with perverse instincts, greedy men, cowardly men, lying men; but the elegance of the room invested each one with a kind of aristocracy. — Ian Fleming

We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive ... Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die. — Candace Fleming

Ian Fleming was my cousin, you know. He was in naval intelligence. — Christopher Lee

It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria in different degrees. Generally speaking it may be said that the least sensitive bacteria are the Gram-negative bacilli, and the most susceptible are the pyogenic cocci ... In addition to its possible use in the treatment of bacterial infections penicillin is certainly useful ... for its power of inhibiting unwanted microbes in bacterial cultures so that penicillin insensitive bacteria can readily be isolated. — Alexander Fleming

Bond smelt the smell of danger. — Ian Fleming

He could not just wear a watch. It had to be a Rolex. — Ian Fleming

I hate Nassau and the Bahamas. It's one of those places I'd always wanted to visit since reading Ian Fleming but it was full of casinos with Americans in shorts. — Tony Parsons

I would rather have a man dog then a women dog because they do not bear like women dogs, it is a hard case it is shoking. — Marjorie Fleming

Friends, there are many areas in which I need encouragement, but worrying is not one of them. I worry the way Renee Fleming sings high Cs: Effortlessly. Loudly. At length. — Martha Beck

In the centre of Bond was a hurricane-room, the kind of citadel found in old-fashioned houses in the tropics. These rooms are small, strongly built cells in the heart of the house, in the middle of the ground floor and sometimes dug down into its foundations. To this cell the owner and his family retire if the storm threatens to destroy the house, and they stay there until the danger is past. Bond went to his hurricane room only when the situation was beyond his control and no other possible action could be taken. Now he retired to this citadel, closed his mind to the hell of noise and violent movement, and focused on a single stitch in the back of the seat in front of him, waiting with slackened nerves for whatever fate had decided for B. E. A. Flight No. 130. — Ian Fleming

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. — Ian Fleming

When she had failed once or twice to respond to some conversational gambit or other, Bond also relapsed into silence and occupied himself with his own gloomy thoughts. — Ian Fleming

It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them, and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body. The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant. — Alexander Fleming

Russ decided the best defense was a good offense. "I'm Russell Van Alstyne, Millers Kill chrief of police." He held out his hand. She shook firm, like a guy.
"Clare Fergusson," she said. "I'm the new priest at Saint Alban's. That's the Episcopal Church. At the corner of Elm and Church." there was a faint testiness in her voice. Russ relaxed a fraction. A woman priest. If that didn't beat all.
"I know which it is. There are only four churches in town." He saw the fog creeping along the edges of his glasses again and snatched them off, fishing for a tissue in his pocket. "Can you tell me what happened, um ... " What was he supposed to call her? "Mother?"
"I go by Reverend, Chief. Ms. is fine, too."
"Oh. Sorry. I never met a woman priest before."
"We're just like the men priests, except we're willing to pull over and ask directions. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

He put down the receiver and looked vaguely at the paper in his hand. It was a rough piece of white wrapping paper. Scrawled in pencil in ragged block letters were the words:
HE DISAGREED WITH SOMETHING THAT ATE HIM
And underneath in brackets:
(P.S. WE HAVE PLENTY MORE JOKES AS GOOD AS THIS) — Ian Fleming

During the next two days James Bond was permanently in this state without regaining consciousness. He watched the procession of his dreams go by without any effort to disturb their sequence, although many of them were terrifying and all were painful. He knew that he was in a bed and that he was lying on his back and could not move and in one of his twilight moments he thought there were people round him, but he made no effort to open his eyes and re-enter the world. He felt safer in the darkness and he hugged it to him. — Ian Fleming

So much of James Bond was Ian Fleming himself. Ian was never able to write about anything he did not know, or any place he had not been. James Bond had been around for a long time
as long, in fact, as Ian Fleming had been dreaming himself into fantasy situations. When he finally emerged on paper, 007 was a toughened-up younger-brother version of Ian himself: more straightforward, less interesting, the kind of young hothead Ian might have been had he not valued power above adventure. — Henry Chancellor

Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold. — Ian Fleming

He suddenly dropped his bantering tone and looked at Bond sharply and venomously. — Ian Fleming

It made economic sense, if you looked at it from the right angle; it was not in the Clan's interest for the price of the commodity they shifted to drop - and drop it surely would, if it was legalized or if the pressure to keep up the war on drugs ever slackened. But for Mike Fleming, who'd willingly given the best years of his life to the DEA, it was a deeply unsettling idea; nauseating, even. Bought and sold: We're doing the dealers' work for them, keeping prices high. — Charles Stross

There was no sign of life round the domed emplacement of the Moonraker, and the concrete, already beginning to shimmer in the early morning sun, stretched emptily away towards Deal. It looked like a newly laid aerodome or rather, he thought, with its three disparate concrete 'things', the beehive dome,the flat-iron blast-wall, and the distant cube of the firing point, each casting black pools of shadow towards him in the early sun, like a Dali desert landscape in which three objets trouves reposed at carefully calculated random. — Ian Fleming

Our prisons are full of people who think they're Napoleon..or God. — Ian Fleming

My dear Isa, I now sit down on my botom to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me. — Marjorie Fleming

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. — Ian Fleming

I didn't know about competition or the Olympics until Peggy Fleming won in 1968. My mother looked after all of the competition stuff. I just skated. I didn't really love competition, but that was the only way to get better. You'd see more talent. — Dorothy Hamill

The ultimate goal should be doing your best and enjoying it. — Peggy Fleming

It should have been the Arabian Nights, but to Bond, seeing it first above the tops of trams and above the great scars of modern advertising along the river frontage, it seemed a once beautiful theatre-set that modern Turkey had thrown aside in favour of the steel and concrete flat-iron of the Istanbul-Hilton Hotel, blankly glittering behind him on the heights of Pera. — Ian Fleming

Every civilisation has had its irrational but reassuring myth. Previous civilisations have used their culture to sing about it and tell stories about it. Ours has used its mathematics to prove it. — David Fleming

I wear my Peggy Fleming T-shirt when I go to sleep every night before I compete, and for the past four years, it's brought me incredible good luck. — Sarah Hughes

Someone once said that there are probably seven naturally good singing days in a year-and those are days you won't be booked. What we must learn is how to sing through all the other days. — Renee Fleming

Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas. — Ian Fleming

Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite 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. — Ian Fleming

How soon Mathis had been proved right and how soon his own little sophistries had been exploded in his face! — Ian Fleming

If you cannot say what you mean, your majesty, you will never mean what you say and a gentleman should always mean what he says. — Reginald Fleming 'R.J.' Johnston - The Last Emperor

What has been seen cannot be unseen — Julia Spencer-Fleming

For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Rontgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new ... — Alexander Fleming

Maybe they were back to not talking. That's what she missed the most: talking. Serious, silly, bone-deep, flippant, all their words and thoughts like gifts to each other, the only gifts they, with their hobbled hearts, could give. — Julia Spencer-Fleming

I would stay away from him and leave him to go his own road where there would be other women, countless other women, who would probably give him as much physical pleasure as he had had with me. I wouldn't care, or at least I told myself that I wouldn't care, because none of them would ever own him - own any larger piece of him than I now did. — Ian Fleming

power is the goal of all ambition, — Ian Fleming

Each dark conjecture came and for a moment settled like a vulture on Bond's shoulder and croaked into his ear that he had been a blind fool. — Ian Fleming

Pulled out my Valery Gergiev trump card and said I would have to call him about getting another hotel. There are many ways in which a soprano relies upon the guidance of a conductor, and not all of them are confined to the stage. As a result of dropping the most powerful name in Russian music today, I got a window and a view. — Renee Fleming

Bond had taken her to the station and had kissed her once hard on the lips and had gone away. It hadn't been love, but a quotation had come into Bond's mind as his cab moved out of Pennsylvania station: 'Some love is fire, some love is rust. But the finest, cleanest love is lust. — Ian Fleming

What a man! He certainly seems to have the run of this country. Just shows how one can push a democracy around, what with habeas corpus and human rights and all the rest. Glad we haven't got him on our hands in England. — Ian Fleming

In his particular line of business, peace had reigned for nearly a year. And peace was killing him. — Ian Fleming

Hope makes a good breakfast. Eat plenty of it. — Ian Fleming

Mistress Agatha Brown, she was Church of England, but she just done gone to the Catholics. And it seems they don't hold with places like 3½, not even when they're decently run. — Ian Fleming

It was palpable, all that wanting: Mother wanting something more, Dad wanting something more, everyone wanting something more. This wasn't going to do for us fifties girls; we were going to have to change the equation even if it meant ... abstaining from motherhood, because clearly that was where Mother got caught. — Anne Taylor Fleming

Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles. — Ian Fleming