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 smoke deep into your lungs. Your stars have already let you come quite a long way since you left your mother’s womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world.
Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold.
You never get real adventures without a bit of risk somewhere.
It was a room-shaped room with furniture-shaped furniture, and dainty curtains.
Because people are very careful with the secrets of their own business doesn’t mean that they’ll be careful with the secrets of yours.
For an instant he felt nettled at the irony, the lightest shadow of a snub, with which she had met his decisiveness, and at the way he had risen to her quick glance. But it was only an infinitesimal clink of foils and as the bowing maitre d’hotel led them through the crowded room, it was forgotten as Bond in her wake watched the heads of the diners turn to look at her.
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.
Continue, my dear friend. It is interesting for me to see this new Bond. 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. Continue. Develop your arguments. There may be something I can use to my own chief the next time I want to get out of an unpleasant job.’ He grinned maliciously. Bond ignored him.
People are so damn sensitive about colour around here that you can’t even ask a barman for a jigger of rum. You have to ask for a jegro.
Mister. Nothing is forever. Only death is permanent. Nothing is forever except what you did to me.
Only law firm out there’s called Smith and Wesson.
Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity.
Don’t lose faith in your stars.
Bond frowned. ‘It’s not difficult to get a Double O number if you’re prepared to kill people,’ he said. ‘That’s all the meaning it has. It’s nothing to be particularly proud of.
The double 0 numerals signify an agent who has killed and who is privileged to kill on active service.
In the background there thudded always the hidden metronome of the Casino, ticking up its little treasure of one-per-cents with each spin of a wheel and each turn of a card – a pulsing fat-cat with a zero for a heart.
A scar had been beaten into his mind which would only heal by experience.
He’s not a bad guy really, except he’s so crooked, you shake hands with him you better count your fingers afterwards.
THE SCENT and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.
I prefer to regard myself as one who has the ability and the mental and nervous equipment to make his own laws and act according to them rather than accept the laws that suit the lowest common denominator of the people.