The Outsider Quotes

“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

“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

“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. In a world that increasingly obsesses over the gods of power, money and fame, a journalist and a writer must remain detached, like a bird on a rail, watching, noting, probing, commenting but never joining. In short, an outsider.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“things) in deep penetration into target territory, information-gathering and withdrawal unseen. Rumours had long persisted that part of London’s extensive help to Lagos had been the presence of our Special Forces. Political denial had always been”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“Al fin y al cabo, los escritores son criaturas raras, y más si intentan ganarse la vida escribiendo.”
― Frederick Forsyth, El intruso: Mi vida en clave de intriga

“and we walked out into the sun. She was just as I had remembered her from seventy years earlier, when, aged five, I was dropped into an open cockpit at Hawkinge field and became mesmerized by the power and beauty of the Supermarine Spitfire. The long, lean lines, only slightly degraded by the bubble Perspex dome behind the pilot’s cockpit; the recognizable-anywhere elliptical wings, the genius of designer R. J. Mitchell. The four-bladed propeller, stark against the Kentish late-summer sky the same cerulean blue it had been in the summer of 1944. That was when I swore my little boy’s oath; that one day I, too, would fly a Spitfire.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“The thing about wings is that they are yours and yours alone. You cannot inherit them from an indulgent father; you cannot buy them in Savile Row; you cannot win them in a lucky draw; you cannot marry them along with a pretty girl; you cannot steal them on a shoplifting spree. You cannot even earn them in a team event. You fight and you struggle, you study and you learn, you practice and you persevere, and finally you do it alone, high above the clouds, in a single-seater.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“That is why I believe that this coterie of vain mandarins and cowardly politicians stained the honor of my country forever, and I will never forgive them.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“The exam markers must have been somewhat bewildered to be told that when the Armada appeared, Francis Drake was playing with his balls.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue

“truculent.”
― Frederick Forsyth, The Outsider: My Life in Intrigue