Literary Birthday – 25 August – Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth was born 25 August 1938 and died 9 June 2025.
Frederick Forsyth – Seven Quotes
- I’m slightly mercenary: I write for the money.
- The Internet offers authors and their readers a new diversity of opportunities and freedom.
- Get your facts right. Try to write a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
- As a novelist nowadays, you have to assume that everything you say will be, for some reader somewhere (and maybe for hundreds of them), something they know a lot about. And they do not forgive slovenly descriptions riddled with errors.
- Twelve pages a day, 3,000 words, seven days a week. But it’s the research that takes the time. And, yes, I have to force myself to write. Sounds ungrateful, I know.
- In the early stage of thinking up a plot, I can be anywhere: on a fishing boat in the tropics or walking the dogs – and thinking.
- The only time I need quiet is when I am physically writing. I’ve a farm, and I’ve converted the upper floor of the barn into a writing room. There I sit and type: 10 pages a day for 50 days. But there’s been at least a year or more of meticulous preparation before I hit the first keys.
Frederick Forsyth was an English author of bestselling thrillers and an occasional political commentator. He was best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal
, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, and The Kill List. Many of his novels and stories were adapted for film and television. His series of novels sold more than 75 million copies worldwide, and won him honours including a CBE in 1997 and the Crime Writers’ Association Diamond Dagger award.
Source for Image: Das blaue Sofa, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frederick_Forsyth_-_01.jpg
by Amanda Patterson
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