A medium Vodka dry Martini—with a slice of lemon peel. Shaken and not stirred, please. I would prefer Russian or polish vodka.
—Ian Fleming (1908–1964)
It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–1794)
Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)