Posted 14 November 2007 - 01:47 AM
Casino Royale
As the rubber was flayed from his off-side wheels and the rims for an instant tore up the tarmac, the heavy car whirled across the road in a tearing dry skid, slammed the left bank with a crash that knocked Bond out of the driving seat on to the floor, and then, facing back up the road, it reared slowly up, its front wheels spinning and its great headlights searching the sky.
You are about to awake when you dream that you are dreaming.
LALD
The thudding rhythm and the sour-sweet smell rocked them as they pushed through the heavy curtains inside the swing door.
How can one explain to someone who hasn't lived close to the secret heart of the tropics, at the mercy of their anger and stealth and poison; who hasn't experienced the mystery of the drums, seen the quick working of magic and the mortal dread it inspires.
Moonraker
There might be cheats or possible cheats among 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.
DAF
He thought of the lovely face cradled on the open hand below him, innocent and defenceless in sleep, the scorn gone from the level grey eyes, and the ironical droop from the corners of the passionate mouth, and Bond knew that he was very near to being in love with her.
He listened, gazing at the circle of slowly swaying curtains, trying to forget that he was clinging like a fly half-way down the side of the Queen Elizabeth, trying not to listen to the sea far below him, trying to still his own heavy breathing and the hammering of his heart.
FRWL
She banged the door shut behind her and ran wildly off down the corridor with her hands over her ears against the pursuing scream that never came.
"Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored."
Bond pitched forward on to the floor and lay sprawled under the funereal violet light.
Doctor No
The sixty-eight tons deadweight of the Super Constellation hurtled high above the green and brown chequerboard of Cuba and, with only another hundred miles to go, started its slow declining flight toward Jamaica.
The bizarre, gliding figure looked like a giant venomous worm wrapped in grey tin-foil, and Bond would not have been surprised to see the rest of it trailing slimily along the carpet behind.
He thought of the screaming lungs stuffing with the filthy dust, the body bending and then falling under the weight, the last impotent kick of the heels, the last flash of thought -- rage, horror, defeat? -- and then the silence of the stinking tomb.
Goldfinger
I am a poet in deeds -- not often in words.
Slowly the red dawn broke over the endless plain of black grass that gradually turned to the famous Kentucky blue as the sun ironed out the shadows.
I'll give you one last aphorism for your book, Goldfinger: "Never go a bear of England."
FYEO
"I propose to call you Donatienne, or possibly Solange, because these are names that suit my mood and the evening."
"Never send a man where you can send a bullet."
Thunderball
When Bond came round again, he was lying face downward on his bed and his whole body was bathed in exquisite sensation.
Then she gave a small sigh, pulled the pillow to the edge of the bed so that it was just above him, laid her head down so that she could see him whenever she wanted to, and closed her eyes.
TSWLM
The narrowed watchful eyes gave his good looks the dangerous, almost cruel quality that had frightened me when I had first set eyes on him, but now that I knew how he could smile, I thought his face only exciting, in a way that no man's face had ever excited me before.
OHMSS
It was one of those Septembers when it seemed that the summer would never end.
If there was one thing that set James Bond really moving in life, with the exception of gun-play, it was being passed at speed by a pretty girl; and it was his experience that girls who drove competitively like that were always pretty -- and exciting.
The three-quarter moon burned down with an almost dazzling fire and the snow crystals scintillated back at it like a carpet of diamond dust.
YOLT
Bond let go with hands and feet and plummeted down towards peace, towards the rippling feathers of some childhood dream of softness and escape from pain.
TMWTGG
But James Bond twisted like a dying animal on the ground and the iron in his hand cracked viciously again and again -- five times -- and then fell out of his hand onto the black earth as his gun hand went to the right side of his belly and stayed there, clutching at the terrible pain.
For James Bond, the same view would always pall.
Finally, at the risk of violating the one-sentence concept of this thread, permit me to offer a short couple of sentences from DAF.
And the eyes of the man whose Blood Group had been F spoke to him and said, "Mister. Nothing is forever. Only death is permanent. Nothing is forever except what you did to me."
If you had to pick a sentence from the Fleming canon, one which to you summed up why you read his books, which would it be? It can be descriptive prose, dialogue, or narration.
