The Day of the Jackal Quotes

“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

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

“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

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

“The Jackal was perfectly aware that in 1963 General de Gaulle was not only the President of France; he was also the most closely and skilfully guarded figure in the Western world. To assassinate him, as was later proved, was considerably more difficult than to kill President John F. Kennedy of the United States. Although the English killer did not know it, French security experts who had through American courtesy been given an opportunity to study the precautions taken to guard the life of President Kennedy had returned somewhat disdainful of those precautions as exercised by the American Secret Service. The French experts rejection of the American methods was later justified when in November 1963 John Kennedy was killed in Dallas by a half-crazed and security-slack amateur while Charles de Gaulle lived on, to retire in peace and eventually to die in his own home.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“The following day, July 18, there was a small paragraph at the bottom of an inside page of Le Figaro. It announced that in Paris the Deputy Chief of the Brigade Criminelle of the Police Judiciaire, Commissaire Hippolyte Dupuy, had suffered a severe stroke in his office at the Quai des Orfevres and had died on his way to hospital. A successor had been named. He was Commissaire Claude Lebel, Chief of the Homicide Division, and in view of the pressure of work on all the departments of the Brigade during the summer months, he would take up his new duties forthwith. The Jackal, who read every French newspaper available in London each day, read the paragraph after his eye had been caught by the word 'Criminelle' in the headline, but thought nothing of it.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“Along the wide straight road he pushed the car well over eighty miles an hour and kept the tachometre needle flickering just below the start of the red band.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“The eyes of the Englishman were open and stared back with frank candour. Except for the irises, which were of flecked grey so that they seemed smoky like the hoar mist on a winter’s morning. It took Rodin a few seconds to realize that they had no expression at all. Whatever thoughts did go on behind the smoke-screen, nothing came through, and Rodin felt a worm of unease.

Like all men created by systems and procedures, he did not like the unpredictable and therefore the uncontrollable.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“El claro de luna convierte al hombre más civilizado en un primitivo”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“Privately Jacqueline hated him as much as on the first day they had met, but she had learned that what he lacked in virility he could be made to make up in loquacity”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“Meudon.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“Along the banks of the Seine the couples strolled as always on summer nights, hand in hand, slowly as if drinking wine in the dusk and love and youth that will never, however hard they try, be quite the same again.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“Within a few hours she knew she would be naked in the arms of the lover she hated, and she wanted to look her best.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“whatever expression was on the killer’s face, it never touched his eyes, which appeared clouded by streaks of grey like wisps of smoke covering all expression that might have touched them.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“A professional does not act out of fervour, and is therefore more calm and less likely to make elementary errors. Not being idealistic he is not likely to have second thoughts at the last minute about who else might get hurt in the explosion, or whatever method, and being a professional he has calculated the risks to the last contingency. So his chances of success on schedule are surer than anyone else, but he will not even enter into operation until he has devised a plan that will enable him not only to complete the mission, but to escape unharmed.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“cortege”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“Caron for a few minutes agreed to be in his communications room at the time Caron suggested to take a person-to-person call from Lebel on a matter of great urgency. Van Ruys of South Africa was out”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal

“he looked up at the Englishman, and an eel of fear wriggled in his bowels.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal