Children S Authors

"Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes’, otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life."

"Most motor-cars are conglomerations (this is a long word for bundles) of steel and wire and rubber and plastic, and electricity and oil and petrol and water, and the toffee papers you pushed down the crack in the back seat last Sunday. Smoke comes out of the back of them and horn-squawks out of the front, and they have white lights like big eyes in front, and red lights behind. And that is about that — just motor-cars, tin boxes on wheels for running about in. But some motorcars — mine, for instance, and perhaps yours — are different. If you get to like them and understand them, if you are kind to them and don't scratch their paint and bang their doors, if you fill them up and pump them up when they need it, of you keep them clean and polish and out the rain and snow as much as possible, you will find, you MAY find, that they become almost like persons — MORE than just ordinary persons — MAGICAL PERSONS!!!"

"I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

"Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action."

"The difference between a good golf shot and a bad one is the same difference between a beautiful and a plain woman — a matter of millimetres."

"Doctor No said, in the same soft resonant voice, ‘You are right. Mister Bond. That is just what I am, a maniac. All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards their goal. The great scientists, the artists, the philosophers, the religious leaders – all maniacs. What else but a blind singleness of purpose could have given focus to their genius, would have kept them in the groove of their purpose? Mania, my dear Mister Bond, is as priceless as genius. Dissipation of energy, fragmentation of vision, loss of momentum, the lack of follow-through — these are the vices of the herd.’ Doctor No sat slightly back in his chair. ‘I do not possess these vices. I am, as you correctly say, a maniac – a maniac, Mister Bond, with a mania for power. That’ – the black holes glittered blankly at Bond through the contact lenses – ‘is the meaning of my life. That is why I am here. That is why you are here. That is why here exists.’"

"And I would like a medium Vodka dry Martini — with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please. I would prefer Russian or Polish vodka."

"Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored."

"Just as, in at least one religion, accidie is the first of the cardinal sins, so boredom, and particularly the incredible circumstance of waking up bored, was the only vice Bond utterly condemned."

"It was a dark, clean-cut face, with a three-inch scar showing whitely down the sunburned skin of the right cheek. The eyes were wide and level under straight, rather long black brows. The hair was black, parted on the left, and carelessly brushed so that a thick black comma fell down over the right eyebrow. The longish straight nose ran down to a short upper lip below which was a wide and finely drawn but cruel mouth. The line of jaw was straight and firm. A section of dark suit, white shirt and black knitted tie completed the picture."

"He disagreed with something that ate him."

"He sat down next door in the seat she had left and watched the grim suburbs of Philadelphia showing their sores, like beggars, to the rich train."

"The bitch is dead now."

"It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray and the bullet would never miss."

"Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles." He laughed. "But don't let me down and become human yourself. We would lose a wonderful machine."

"'I’m wondering whose side I ought to be on. I’m getting very sorry for the Devil and his disciples such as the good Le Chiffre. The Devil has a rotten time and I always like to be on the side of the underdog. We don’t give the poor chap a chance. There’s a Good Book about goodness and how to be good and so forth, but there’s no Evil Book about evil and how to be bad. The Devil has no prophets to write his Ten Commandments and no team of authors to write his biography. His case has gone completely by default. We know nothing about him but a lot of fairy stories from our parents and schoolmasters. He has no book from which we can learn the nature of evil in all its forms, with parables about evil people, proverbs about evil people, folk-lore about evil people. All we have is the living example of the people who are least good, or our own intuition. ‘So,’ continued Bond, warming to his argument, ‘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.'"

"I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It come partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It's very pernickety and oldmaidish really, but then when I'm working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble."

"This country-right-or-wrong business is getting a little out-of-date. Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I’d been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts."

"Bond insisted ordering Leiter's Haig-and-Haig "on the rocks" and then he looked carefully at the barman. "A Dry Martini", he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet." "Oui, monsieur." "Just a moment. Three measures of Gordons, 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. Got it?" "Certainly, monsieur." The barman seemed pleased with the idea."

"Against the background of this luminous and sparkling stage Bond stood in the sunshine and felt his mission to be incongruous and remote and his dark profession an affront to his fellow actors."

"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."

"[In Goldfinger, Pussy Galore] only needed the right man to come along and perform the laying on of hands in order to cure her psycho-pathological malady."

"More people have died at Chappaquiddick than have died at nuclear plants."

"Great comedy is great comedy only if it has an element of truth in it."

"So many people have done things this year for me, and it’s… I don’t know. It’s not embarrassing. It’s just gratifying, and it has helped me to see so much so clearly about the goodness of people and their decency."

"You know, I have a philosophy there’s good that happens in everything. It may not reveal itself immediately, and even in the most dire circumstances, if you just wait, if you just remain open to things, the good in it will reveal itself. And that has happened to me as well in countless, countless ways."

"You, I — When this kind of thing befalls you, it’s hard not to become self-focused. It’s hard to not just think of yourself, and it’s hard to think that everybody’s gonna drop what they’re doing and deal with me, with you. You have to guard against that because, to the family, this is as disrupting, it’s as upsetting as it is to me and in some cases even more so. So you can’t — I can’t — be self-absorbed about it when that is the tendency when you are told that you’ve gotta due date, you have an expiration date. A lot of people never get told that, and so they don’t face life this way. This is not a complaint. I’m simply… This is why I say, there’s so much I want to say today and so much I want to say well, so much I want to say exactly as I’m feeling it, because my point in all of this today is gratitude. My point in everything today that I’m sharing with you about this is to say thanks and to tell everybody involved how much I love you from the bottom of a sizable and growing and still beating heart, and there’s room for much more. All because I have learned what love really is during this."

"I have outlived the diagnosis, I’ve been able to receive and hear and process some of the most wonderful, nice things about me that I might not have ever heard had I not gotten sick. Again think, how many people who pass away never hear the eulogies, never hear the thank-yous? I’ve been very lucky, folks, in I can’t tell you how many ways."

"This is, in fact, the last program of the year for me. And, folks, I want to tell you at the outset here, to me this is a very important program. I have very much that I want to say to all of you today, and I’m feeling very pressured. Not pressured. I’m feeling stage fright kind of thing. There’s so much I want to say, and I want to say it correctly. I want to convey my feelings, and I want to do it right. I want to do it to the best of my ability. Now, I have found in circumstances like this that the best thing to do is not to think about it. Don’t make it more pressure packed than it already is. But it’s very important. You all are very important. My family is very important to me. I’ve had a year now to reflect on the things that really matter, a year to reflect on the things that are completely relevant and important to me. And all of you are in that large conglomeration of people and things that are very important to me."

"I love you, too. Big time."

"There's a lot of people calling for the end of violence. There's a lot of conservatives, social media, who say that any violence or aggression at all is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances. I'm glad Sam Adams, Thomas Paine, the actual Tea Party guys, the men at Lexington and Concord didn't feel that way."

"I know that there’s a sizable and growing sentiment for people who believe that’s we're headed to, whether we want to get there or not, secession [...] Now, I didn’t advocate for it. I never would advocate for secession. I’m simply repeating what I have heard. (December 8, 2020)"

"I actually think that we're trending toward secession [...] I see more and more people asking what in the world do we have in common with the people who live in, say, New York? What is there that makes us believe that there is enough of us there to even have a chance at winning New York? Especially if you’re talking about votes. (December 7, 2020)"

"This coronavirus, they're just — all of this panic is just not warranted. This, I'm telling you, when I tell you — when I've told you that this virus is the common cold. When I said that, it was based on the number of cases. It's also based on the kind of virus this is."

"Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore. All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it's been around."

"You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the Left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, so long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it's perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the left."

"You find yourself staring, looking at, casually glancing at a woman, but you know that it's now socially taboo. You shouldn't be doing it. And you think everybody is noticing you doing it and condemning you in their minds. You shouldn't — so you walk up to the woman and say, "Will you please ask your breasts to stop staring at my eyes?""

"You know, folks, I have to tell you something. This, this white guilt, it's time for all this white guilt to end. I know it won't because I know that most people are scared to death and live lives totally immersed in fear because that's what other people want them to live like, but I'm sick of it. White guilt is doing nothing for anybody, and white guilt is not solving anything. And besides that, a little history lesson for you. If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it's Caucasians. The white race has probably had fewer slaves and for a briefer period of time than any other in the history of the world."

"What do we have to do to make the women realize we don't hate 'em? Change our attitude on abortion? Where does this stuff stop?"

"If one of the main reasons for passing the Gang of Eight immigration bill is so Republicans can prove that they don't hate Hispanics, then what's next? Are the Republicans going to have to support gay marriage to prove that they don't hate gays? Are the Republicans then going to have to support affirmative action to prove they don't hate blacks?"

"You know how to stop abortion? Require that each one occur with a gun."

"God may have replied"

"The study's leaders claim to have bona fide research — I say "bonified" probably here — bonified research that says the average size of a penis is roughly 10% smaller than it was 50 years ago, and the researchers say air pollution is why. Air pollution, global warming has been shown to negatively impact penis size, Italian researchers. I don't buy this, I think it's feminism. If it's tied to the last 50 years — the average size of a member is 10 percent smaller than 50 years — it has to be the feminazis, the chickification and everything else. Give 'em time and they'll blame Bush. Give 'em time. But air pollution vs. feminazis? Ha!"

"Airing anti-Rush Limbaugh commercials during the Rush Limbaugh show would only conflict with the listeners who have chosen to listen to Rush Limbaugh."

"[In the period after the Gulf War (1990–1991) ended] Around the same time, [[Timothy McVeigh|[Timothy] McVeigh]] began listening to Limbaugh, who was just coming into his own as a best-selling author, television performer, and talk radio megastar. "As they say, 'Rush is right,' (double meaning)," McVeigh wrote to a friend, "and many people (opponents) consider his views extreme." He became an ardent fan."

"I couldn’t sit through some of it, and we ended up leaving, especially when they just went just full-out applause when they put that medal around Rush. And then — I know. I know. Do you know there was a 97-year-old man who was a guest of another colleague, who has been working really hard to try to get the Medal of Freedom for this man, who survived Nazi Germany? And he invented something to do with solar, profound accomplishments, profound strength, things that we need to be celebrating in our country. And he watched in the gallery to see somebody like that get the Medal of Freedom, when he’s sitting there, asking — you know, when he’s sitting there, just like, “I’ve done all these things in my life. I’ve survived all this.” And he did it from — you know, in this beautiful, gracious way, even after all that he’s been through."

"Trump created his MAGA coalition based on fear of “the other,” which has historically been a potent political move (think Richard Nixon’s perfection of the Southern strategy and Ronald Reagan’s aggressive race-baiting with his fictional Chicago welfare queen, among many other dog whistles). After America elected and then re-elected Barack Obama, not only a Black man but a constitutional scholar and an intellectual, to the presidency, the Republicans in Congress completely lost their minds and pledged to make him fail as president. They began to do all they could to shut down government and to excoriate Democrats, using the list of pejorative terms former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cribbed from conservative shock-jock Rush Limbaugh. The hard turn in Congress away from collegiality and compromise had begun."

"data about the demographics of COVID-19 victims began to trickle out. On April 7, major outlets began reporting that preliminary data showed that black and Latino Americans were being disproportionately felled by the coronavirus. That afternoon, Rush Limbaugh complained, "If you dare criticize the mobilization to deal with this, you're going to be immediately tagged as a racist"... The nationwide death toll that day was just 13,000 people; it now stands above 70,000, a mere month later. (p 235-6)"

"You have to give him credit — he works hard at getting his facts right."

"Everyone knows that Rush Limbaugh and I don't agree on everything in life, and maybe that is kind of an understatement … I strongly believe when we can put our differences aside, even Harry Reid and Rush Limbaugh, we should do that and try to accomplish good things for the American people."