Art & Creativity Quote by Leslie Charteris

There is something deliciously unglamorous about a thriller writer admitting he entered the Bond phenomenon through the movie line, not the page. Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint and a seasoned architect of suave, fast-moving escapism, is quietly puncturing the idea that literary pedigree drives pop-cultural power. His line is almost a shrug: Bond didn’t conquer the world because fellow writers were reverently reading Ian Fleming. Bond conquered because cinema made him unavoidable.

The intent is modest on its face, but the subtext is professional: Charteris is mapping a changing hierarchy in storytelling. By the time Dr. No hit screens in 1962, the adaptation wasn’t merely translating Fleming; it was manufacturing a new, more contagious Bond - image-first, brand-ready, instantly discussable. Charteris is implicitly acknowledging that even insiders were being converted by the mass medium, not the novelistic one. That’s not snobbery; it’s an industry readout.

Context matters: Charteris had already watched his own character migrate into film and television, so he’s speaking from experience about what happens when a printed fantasy becomes a shared visual language. The wry edge lies in how casually he confesses it. A writer of gentleman-adventurer tales admitting he didn’t bother with the rival franchise’s books suggests a marketplace where stories compete less on prose than on presence. Bond wins by being seen. And everyone else, even fellow craftsmen, has to react to the glare.