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Ian Fleming

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“Now that little problem of yours, this business of not knowing good men from bad men and villains from heroes and so forth...There's still plenty for you to do. And you'll do it. And when you fall in love and have a mistress or a wife and children to look after, it will all seem easier." He opened the door but stopped on the threshold. "Surround yourself with human beings, my dear. They are easier to fight for than principles." He laughed. "But don't let me down and become human yourself. We would lose such a wonderful machine." With a wave of his hand he shut the door.”

“Drax's first reaction was to lurch forward and tear Meyer's cards out of his hand. He faced them on the table, scrabbling feverishly among them for a possible winner. Then he flung them back across the baize. His face was dead white, but his eyes blazed redly at Bond. Suddenly he raised one clenched fist and crashed it on the table among the pile of impotent aces and kings and queens in front of him. Very low, he spat the words at Bond. "You're a che-" "That's enough, Drax!" Basildon's voice came across the table like a whiplash. "None of that talk here. I've been watching the whole game. Settle up. If you've got any complaints, put them in writing to the Committee.”

“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.”

“007: What are the CIA going to say about all this? After all, it's bare-faced poaching. Tanner: They don't own Japan. Anyway, they're not here to know. That's up to this fellow Tanaka. He'll have to fix the machinery for getting it into the Australian Embassy. That's his worry. But the whole thing's on pretty thin ice. The main problem is to make sure he doesn't go straight along to the CIA and tell 'em of your approach. If you get blown, we'll just have to get the Australians to hold the baby. They've don it before when we've been bowled out edging our way into the pacific. We're good friends with their service. First-rate bunch of chaps. And, anyway, the CIA's hands aren't as clean as all that. We've got a whole file of cases where they've crossed wires with us round the world. Often dangerously. We can throw that book at McCone if this business blows up in our faces. But part of your job is to see that it doesn't. 007: Seems to me I'm getting all balled up in high politics. Not my line of country at all.”

“You have doubtless read Trotter’s Instincts of the Herd in War and Peace, Mister Bond. Well, I am by nature and predilection a wolf and I live by a wolf’s laws. Naturally the sheep describe such a person as a “criminal”. ‘The fact, Mister Bond,’ The Big Man continued after a pause, ‘that I survive and indeed enjoy limitless success, although I am alone against countless millions of sheep, is attributable to the modern techniques I described to you on the occasion of our last talk, and to an infinite capacity for taking pains. Not dull, plodding pains, but artistic, subtle pains. And I find, Mister Bond, that it is not difficult to outwit sheep, however many of them there may be, if one is dedicated to the task and if one is by nature an extremely well-equipped wolf.”

“Your reaction was not unexpected. Let me put it this way: Fort Knox is a bank like any other bank. But it is a much bigger bank and its protective devices are correspondingly stronger and more ingenious. To penetrate them will require corresponding strength and ingenuity. That is the only novelty in my project--that it is a big one. Nothing else. Fort Knox is no more impregnable than other fortresses. No doubt we all thought the Brink organization was unbeatable until half a dozen determined men robbed a Brink armored car of a million dollars back in 1950. It is impossible to escape from Sing Sing and yet men have found ways of escaping from it. No, no, gentlemen. Fort Knox is a myth like other myths.”

“The following is the order of battle of the military units presently quartered at Fort Knox. Of the 3rd Armored Division, there is only the Spearhead, but there are also the 6th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the 15th Armor Group, the 160th Engineer Group and approximately half a division from all units of the United States Army currently going through the Armored Replacement Training Center and Military Human Research Unit No 1. There is also a considerable body of men associated with Continental Armored Command Board No 2, the Army Maintenance Board and various activities connected with the Armored Center. In addition there is a police force consisting of twenty officers and some four hundred enlisted men. In short, out of a total population of some sixty thousand, approximately twenty thousand are combat troops of one sort or another.”

“I have discussed this with him and he points out that the Rolex Oyster Perpetual weighs about six ounces and would appreciably slow up the use of his left hand in combat. His practice, in fact, is to use fairly cheap, expendable wrist watches on expanding metal bracelets which can be slipped forward over the thumb and used in the form of a knuckle-duster, either on the outside or the inside of the hand.”