Frederick Forsyth > Quotes

“there is no collective guilt,...guilt is individual, like salvation.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“It is cold at six-forty in the morning on a March day in Paris, and seems even colder when a man is about to be executed by firing squad.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“… Shannon’s fingers itched to smash the man in the face. Inside his head he kept telling himself,
Keep cool, baby, absolutely cool.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War

“Moonlight turns even the most civilised man into a primitive.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“A journalist should never join the Establishment, no matter how tempting the blandishments. It is our job to hold power to account, not join it.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“...a woman of quite bovine stupidity and potato-like contours...”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Deceiver

“To understand everything is to forgive everything.’ When one can understand the people, their gullibility and their fear, their greed and their lust for power, their ignorance and their docility to the man who shouts the loudest, one can forgive. Yes, one can forgive even what they did. But one can never forget. There”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“in police work ninety-nine percent of the effort is routine, unspectacular enquiry, checking and double-checking, laboriously building up a web of parts until the parts become a whole, the whole becomes a net, and the net finally encloses the criminal with a case that will not just make headlines but stand up in court. He”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“With terrorists, whether al-Fatah or Black September or the new, supposedly religious breed, the rage and the hatred come first.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Kill List

“The hatred of your country is not because it attacks theirs; it is because it keeps theirs safe. Never seek popularity. You can have supremacy or be loved but never both. What is felt toward you is ten percent genuine disagreement and ninety percent envy. Never forget two things! No man can ever forgive his protector. There is no loathing that any man harbors more intense than that toward his benefactor.”
― Frederick Forsyth, Avenger

“The most frills-free airliner cannot compare with the rear of a C-130. No soundproofing, no heating, no pressurization and certainly no trolley service. The Tracker knew it would never get quieter but it would become savagely cold as the air thinned. Nor is the rear leak-proof. Despite the oxygen-delivering mask on his face, the place by now stank of kerosene and oil.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Kill List

“From the anarchists of tsarist Russia to the IRA of 1916, from the Irgun and the Stern Gang to the EOKA in Cyprus, from the Baader-Meinhof group in Germany, the CCC in Belgium, the Action Directe in France, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Red Army Faction again in Germany, the Rengo Sekigun in Japan, through to the Shining Path in Peru to the modern IRA in Ulster or the ETA in Spain, terrorism came from the minds of the comfortably raised, well-educated, middle-class theorists with a truly staggering personal vanity and a developed taste for self-indulgence.”
― Frederick Forsyth, Avenger

“People had Jewish friends, good friends; Jewish employers, good employers; Jewish employees, hard workers. They obeyed the laws, they didn’t hurt anyone. And here was Hitler saying they were to blame for everything. ‘So when the vans came and took them away, people didn’t do anything. They stayed out of the way, they kept quiet. They even got to believing the voice that shouted the loudest. Because that’s the way people are, particularly the Germans. We’re a very obedient people. It’s our greatest strength and our greatest weakness. It enables us to build an economic miracle while the British are on strike, and it enables us to follow a man like Hitler into a great big mass grave.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“It is always tempting to wonder what would have happened if … or if not. Usually it is a futile exercise, for what might have been is the greatest of all the mysteries.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“The natives who saw him walking alone, and later brought him back to the town for burial, said he was whistling when he went. Being simple peasants, growers of yams and cassava, they did not know what the whistling was. It was a tune called "Spanish Harlem.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War

“He said that it was not his job to ensure that his soldiers died for their country. It was his job to make sure the other poor bastards died for theirs. Understand?”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Fist of God

“Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive le sacre mercenaire”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War

“There were discrepancies. Sometimes”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Kill List

“position for his colleague in Secret Intelligence would be just the reverse. Sir Mark was having”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Deceiver

“one can forgive even what they did. But one can never forget.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“There are several ways of making quick money but in the general list, writing a novel rates well below robbing a bank.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“habiendo algunos fanáticos en el valle de Shah-i-Kot, en la provincia de Paktia. Una vez más la información era inexacta: no eran un puñado, sino centenares. Al ser afganos los talibanes derrotados, tenían a donde ir: sus aldeas y pueblos natales. Allí podían escabullirse sin dejar rastro. Pero los miembros de Al Qaeda eran árabes, uzbekos y, los más feroces de todos, chechenos. No hablaban pastún y la gente del pueblo afgano los odiaba, de manera que solo podían rendirse o morir peleando. Casi todos eligieron esto último. El mando estadounidense reaccionó al chivatazo con un plan a pequeña escala, la operación Anaconda, que fue asignada a los SEAL de la Armada. Tres enormes Chinook repletos de efectivos despegaron rumbo al valle, que se suponía vacío de combatientes. El helicóptero que iba en cabeza se disponía a tomar tierra, con el morro levantado y la cola baja, la rampa abierta por detrás y a solo un par de metros del suelo, cuando los emboscados de Al Qaeda dieron el primer aviso. Un lanzagranadas hizo fuego. Estaba tan cerca que el proyectil atravesó el fuselaje del helicóptero sin explotar. No había tenido tiempo de cargarse, así que lo único que hizo fue entrar por un costado y salir por el otro sin tocar a nadie, dejando un par de boquetes simétricos. Pero lo que sí hizo daño fue el incesante fuego de ametralladora desde el nido situado entre las rocas salpicadas de nieve. Tampoco hirió a nadie de a bordo, pero destrozó los controles del aparato al horadar la cubierta de vuelo. Gracias a la habilidad y la genialidad del piloto, pocos minutos después el moribundo Chinook ganaba altura y recorría cuatro kilómetros hasta encontrar un sitio más seguro donde proceder a un aterrizaje forzoso. Los otros dos helicópteros se retiraron también. Pero un SEAL, el suboficial Neil Roberts, que se había desenganchado de su cable de amarre, resbaló en un charquito de fluido hidráulico y cayó a tierra. Resultó ileso, pero inmediatamente fue rodeado por miembros de Al Qaeda. Los SEAL jamás abandonan a uno de los suyos, esté vivo o muerto. Poco después de aterrizar regresaron en busca de Roberts, al tiempo que pedían refuerzos por radio. Había empezado la batalla de Shah-i-Kot. Duró cuatro días, y se saldó con la muerte del suboficial Neil Roberts y otros seis estadounidenses. Había tres unidades lo bastante cerca como para acudir a la llamada: un pelotón de SBS británicos por un lado y la unidad de la SAD por el otro; pero el grupo más numeroso era un batallón del 75 Regimiento de Rangers. Hacía un frío endemoniado, estaban a muchos grados bajo cero. La nieve, empujada por el viento incesante, se clavaba en los ojos. Nadie entendía cómo los árabes habían podido sobrevivir en aquellas montañas; pero el caso era que allí estaban, y dispuestos a morir hasta el último hombre. Ellos no hacían prisioneros ni esperaban serlo tampoco. Según testigos presenciales, salieron de hendiduras en las rocas, de grutas invisibles y nidos de ametralladoras ocultos. Cualquier veterano puede confirmar que toda batalla degenera rápidamente en un caos, y en Shah-i-Kot eso sucedió más rápido que nunca. Las unidades se separaron de su contingente, los soldados de sus unidades. Kit Carson se encontró de repente a solas en medio de la ventisca. Vio a otro estadounidense (pudo identificarlo por lo que llevaba en la cabeza: casco, no turbante) también solo, a unos cuarenta metros. Un hombre vestido con túnica surgió del suelo y disparó contra el soldado con su lanzagranadas. Esa vez la granada sí estalló; no dio en el blanco sino que explotó a los pies del soldado.”
― Frederick Forsyth, La lista

“Kuwait was always historically part of Iraq. Like Nehru invading Portuguese Goa.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Fist of God

“To understand everything is to forgive everything.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“penguin.co.uk”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Dogs of War

“Yessir. A crutch, like one-legged men always have.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“When one can understand the people, their gullibility and their fear, their greed and their lust for power, their ignorance and their docility to the man who shouts the loudest, one can forgive.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Odessa File

“Oh, I will go back to Century House and start again. And go back each night to my small flat and listen to my music and eat my baked beans. And you will go back to Nikki, my friend, and hold her very tight, and write your books and forget all this.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Deceiver

“Because he was single, a number of girls made eyes at him, but his rebuffs were always polite and gentle. There were one or two gay men who frequented the neighborhood bar, and he was asked once or twice whether he was one of them. He remained polite as he denied it, simply saying he was waiting for Miss Right. His diary made plain he believed gay men should be stoned to death as slowly as possible, and the thought of lying beside some fat, white pig-eating infidel cow filled him with revulsion.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Kill List

“Yevgeni Krilov knew he was in a room with the richest man in Russia, possibly the world. No one did a ruble’s worth of business in Russia without paying a percentage fee to the supreme boss, albeit through a complex network of shell companies and front men.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Fox