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" I always thought of myself as a kind of literary bureaucrat. And that was never going to be enough for me. "

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" When I started work at Simon & Schuster in 1958, each of us got a bronze paperweight on which was written, in raised type, 'Give the reader a break,' Richard E. Simon. "

" 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. "

" I'm a relatively unfocused person. "

" For a book publisher, there is hardly a more dangerous category than that of celebrity autobiography. Forget who it's by, most books of this kind not only fail but fail big, since they are invariably expensive. "

" It strikes me that people want to be engaged, and that those who go into a bookstore in a time of crisis are much more likely to be looking for explanation than for escapism. "

" There used to be a strong belief that if you wanted to know what was really going on in a country, the best thing to do was to go there and ask a taxi driver. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My father and his brothers never mentioned to their English wives and children that they were Jewish. Being Hungarian was exotic and foreign enough to begin with, and so long as they were not asked, they found it easier, from 1919 on, to let the matter drop. "

" What you hear repeatedly you will eventually believe. "

" Patton's personality was a complex one - he was obsessed with glory, but behind the ivory-hilted pistols, the egomania, the forbidding scowl, and the rows of ribbons, there was a much more ambiguous figure. "

" Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets. "

" I come from a family that was very strong, very successful, very bizarre, and terrifically exciting. Being a Korda is something I regard as special - not wonderful, or worthy of a national monument, but special. "

" 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.' "

" Chanel took women out of corsets and put them into the 'simple little black dress,' the perfectly tailored suit, the bell-bottom sailor pants, and jersey tops. "

" While politicians may be forgiven for failing to predict the future - who can, alas? - it is amazing that they defiantly ignore the past. "

" Much of my publishing life was consumed by the memoirs of movie stars - or by attempts to get them to write a memoir. "

" FDR had a certain charisma, at least in his first term, with the big grin, the cigarette holder at a jaunty angle, and the battered hat on his imposing head, but no other American president since then has had it except JFK - indeed, some of them have been positively anti-charismatic, like Gerald Ford, Carter, and the Bushes. "

" I only met Ian Fleming once, at a party given by my father's friend the director Carol Reed, at his house at 211 King's Road, Chelsea, the garden of which he shared with Peter Ustinov. "

" I did meet Sen. Robert Kennedy, and it taught me something about political charisma. "

" The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed. Most successful people fail from time to time, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success. "

" Luck can often mean simply taking advantage of a situation at the right moment. It is possible to make your luck by being always prepared. "

" Peter Fleming was a famous English traveler, explorer and adventurer, whose non-fiction books were hugely successful. My father owned signed copies of all of them - he and Peter Fleming had become acquainted over some detail of set design at the Korda film studio in Shepperton - and I had read each of them with breathless adolescent excitement. "

" I am a stupendously fast reader and always have been. I can read in at least three languages fluently and two languages with a little bit more difficulty. "

" From time to time, one imagined Bill Clinton had charisma, but it never really was more than an occasional false glare. "

" Years of standing in the limelight portraying other people for large amounts of money does not usually lead to a high degree of self-examination, let alone self-criticism. "

" The novelist wants to know how things will turn out; the historian already knows how things turned out, but wants to know why they turned out the way they did. "

" When my elders mentioned 'The War,' they invariably meant that of 1914-1918, even after 1939, for the Second World War was merely the continuation of the first, 'an armistice of 20 years,' as Marshal Foch had accurately predicted at the Versailles Peace Conference, with some changes of side. "