Frederick Forsyth Quotes

“There is no collective guilt, ... guilt is individual, like salvation. [p.28]”

— Frederick Forsyth

“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

“... 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 Internet offers authors and their readers a new diversity of opportunities and freedom.”

— Frederick Forsyth

“In the 66 years that I have been alive, there has not been one hour, of one day, of one month, of one year, when there has not been a threat aimed at us.”

— Frederick Forsyth

“The man in gray decided to take the Glen Suite of diamonds at midnight. Provided they were still in the apartment safe and the occupants away. This he needed to know. So he watched and he waited. At half past seven he was rewarded.”

— Frederick Forsyth

“The British have always coped without becoming a dictatorship.”

— Frederick Forsyth

Position for his colleague in Secret Intelligence would be just the reverse. Sir Mark was having

— Frederick Forsyth

“The stubbornness of a weak man should never be underestimated. The weak tend to be very stubborn when they've decided on something.”

— Frederick Forsyth

The British left intermittently erupts like a pustule upon the buttock of a rather good country. Seventy years ago it opposed mobilisation against Adolf Hitler and worshiped the other genocide, Josef Stalin. It has marched for Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Andropov. It has slobbered over Ceausescu and Mugabe. It has demonstrated against everything and everyone American for a century.

— Frederick Forsyth

“The last of the lonely places is the sky, a trackless void where nothing lives or grows, and above it, space itself. Man may have been destined to walk upon ice or sand, or climb the mountains or take craft upon the sea. But surely he was never meant to fly? But he does, and finding out how to do it was his last great adventure.”

— Frederick Forsyth

“On Foreign Secretary Robin Cook: If a man cannot keep a measly affair secret, what is he doing in charge of the Intelligence Service?”

— Frederick Forsyth

“It could well be argued that the continuing rights abuses of the present Iraqi regime, if it is allowed to survive, will prove most distressing. This is beyond any doubt. But the West has been required to witness terrible scenes in China, Russia, Vietnam, East Timor, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world. It is simply not possible for the United States to impose humanity on a worldwide scale unless it is prepared to enter into permanent global war.”

— Frederick Forsyth

“As ever with modern Britain, we are let down by a vast, over-manned, over-funded, hidebound, obstructive, box-ticking and incompetent bureaucracy.”

— Frederick Forsyth

He was one of the masters of the thriller and he really was one of the great signposts, because he took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul and where it all really happened, ... The Day of the Jackal.

— Frederick Forsyth

“I'm very sceptical about some of the excesses that I regard the Milibands of this world are leading towards. When you think about it, it's all been incredibly rapid - a year, a year and a half. And it's not a concern: it's an obsession. It's something very close to hysteria.”

— Frederick Forsyth