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" Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life. "
Michael Korda
Nothing
Significance
Art
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" The bestseller list is the tip of the iceberg. "
Michael Korda
List
Iceberg
Tip Of The Iceberg
" The normal reaction of a publisher when faced with an author with a bee in his bonnet is to grab the check and run. "
Michael Korda
Run
Reaction
Bee
" Even almost a century after her death, Sarah Bernhardt, the French actress whose extraordinary personality, flamboyant life and passionate nature became a legend in her own lifetime, remains the byword among most people as the supreme theatrical star. "
Michael Korda
Death
Personality
Life
" One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals. "
Michael Korda
Way
Goals
Keep
" In the Roman world, and in the worlds around it that Romans sought to subdue and control, the gods were merciless, frivolous, prone to set traps for humans, and largely indifferent to the unprivileged bulk of humankind, who in any case did not expect their fate in the afterworld to be any better than it had been on earth. "
Michael Korda
Who
Better
Control
" I'd fought in the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, having left Oxford to do so. "
Michael Korda
Having
Revolution
Oxford
" About once a decade, it becomes necessary to remind Americans again that Ulysses S. Grant was a great man, indeed a giant figure. The usual way to try to do this is by publishing a thumping big biography, and let me say that there is nothing wrong with this, although it still hasn't worked. "
Michael Korda
Great
Me
Nothing
" Few things are more painful than being a successful writer born in a small country with an impenetrable language. "
Michael Korda
Small
Successful
Born
" I once attended a birthday party where Danny Kaye dropped in to entertain the birthday boy and his guests; I was sometimes taken for lunch on Saturdays by my father to The Brown Derby; and my favorite meal is still the Cobb salad in the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel. "
Michael Korda
Hotel
Birthday
Father
" The rich and famous expect to get a lot for their story, whether they are writing it themselves or not. It's not that they need the money, of course; it's a question of ego, like catching the biggest fish. "
Michael Korda
Money
Ego
Famous
" It is hard to celebrate the past in an ecumenical way, or even in a fair-minded one, apparently. The trouble with the past is not just that it's behind us, it's that it is not even over yet. "
Michael Korda
Way
Hard
Past
" Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity. "
Michael Korda
Action
Act
Eternity
" Men naturally resent it when women take greater liberties in dress than men are allowed. "
Michael Korda
Take
Men
Greater
" An ounce of hypocracy is worth a pound of ambition. "
Michael Korda
Worth
Ambition
Ounce
" I came into book publishing without any particular impulse to be in book publishing. "
Michael Korda
Without
Book
Came
" I have an admiration for Mr. Eastwood that borders on the kind that I have for the Grand Canyon. Like it, he is craggy, worn, awesomely impressive and unique, a living four-star tourist attraction that, in the formulaic words of the Guide Michelin, 'vaut le voyage.' "
Michael Korda
Unique
Words
Grand Canyon
" It's often said that everybody has a story to tell, and I suppose that's true, but the problem is that most of them aren't worth telling. "
Michael Korda
True
Story
Worth
" Citizens of Rome might boast that the claim of 'Civus romanus sum' set them apart from barbarians and slaves, and it was true up to a point, but Roman citizens lived in a society that accepted pain, cruelty, and torture as the norm, and in which there was no suggestion of equality at birth or mercy in the afterlife. "
Michael Korda
Equality
True
Society
" T. E. Lawrence was far more than a glamorous, swashbuckling, heroic figure in flowing robes mounted on a camel, leading the Arab tribes against the Turks in World War One. "
Michael Korda
More
Glamorous
Far
" Nixon knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish in his four interviews with David Frost, quite apart from having his agent Irving Paul Lazar negotiate a terrific deal for him, with cash up front. "
Michael Korda
Interviews
Him
Accomplish
" One of the first rules of playing the power game is that all bad news must be accepted calmly, as if one already knew and didn't care. "
Michael Korda
Care
Game
News
" The huge, turgid work of history, sinking under the weight of its own 'politically correct' thesis and its foot- and source notes, is not the British way of writing history, and never has been. "
Michael Korda
Way
Work
Own
" It used to be that the highest ambition of American novelists was to write 'the Great American Novel,' that great white whale of American fiction that would encompass all the American experience in one great book. "
Michael Korda
Great
White
Ambition
" The biggest fool in the world is he who merely does his work supremely well, without attending to appearance. "
Michael Korda
Work
Fool
Without
" My own aunt was Merle Oberon, so movie stardom was not a faraway mystery to me as a child: it was part of the family business. "
Michael Korda
Mystery
Me
Family
" To be scrupulously honest, I only met Noel Coward twice in my life, and then briefly, but I heard so much about him at home when I was growing up that I always felt I knew him well. "
Michael Korda
Life
Growing Up
Growing
" If your family was part of the movie business, then watching 'Moguls & Movie Stars' is like looking at the family photo album: hilarious to members of the family, numbingly boring to those outside the family circle. "
Michael Korda
Looking
Stars
Business
" The first thing to be said about 'Prague Winter,' former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's new book, is that she very wisely chooses to confront early on in it her apparent surprise at learning late in life that she was born Jewish. "
Michael Korda
Winter
Book
Learning
" In my experience, with very few exceptions - I am, as it happens, one of the exceptions - the one thing that most editors don't want to do is edit. It's not nearly as conducive to a successful career as having lunch out with important agents or going to meetings where you get noticed. "
Michael Korda
You
I Am
Lunch
" Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself. "
Michael Korda
Writing
Best
Curiosity