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" Most biographers are apt to be discouraged by the sheer volume of papers left behind by their subject. "

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" Indeed, it is measure of how little we know about Cleopatra that the only images of her are either the coins she struck, bearing very unflattering official portraits of her, or some doubtful busts, which may be of other women imitating her coiffure. "

" I do not start with a full knowledge of the facts; the whole attraction of writing history is to educate myself: it is an exploration into the unknown - 'a journey without maps,' to borrow Graham Greene's phrase. "

" Of course the rich and famous tend to have more going on in their lives than ordinary people, but they aren't always willing to tell the interesting bits. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The purely agitation attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject. "

Not Good Enough

" 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. "

" Nobody could emerge from a childhood at MGM unscathed. "

" 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. "

" We British and Americans have never been conquered and occupied by the Germans, or forced to make the choice between defiance and collaboration, or haunted by the choices, evasions and moral ambiguities that only a defeated and occupied country can feel. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" Prime ministers come and go, but so long as he or she lives, the sovereign remains, receiving and reading all state papers and meeting once a week with the prime minister to advise, enquire, and comment - sometimes sharply, as was the case with Queen Elizabeth II and Mrs. Thatcher - on affairs of state. "

" In Britain and Europe, no event is less forgotten than World War I, or 'The Great War,' as it was called until 1939. "

" I don't give plots to Harold Robbins or Graham Greene, because they don't need them, but a lot of authors do. "

" It's not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day: if you can't live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that the ghosts you chase you never catch. "

" In Eastern Europe, the past is not only always hovering over the present, it is not even passed. It waits, like some malevolent caged beast, ready at any moment to escape and bring back all the horrors. "

" If you don't believe in yourself, then who will believe in you? The next man's way of getting there might not necessarily work for me, so I have to create my own ways of getting there. "

Believe In Yourself

" 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 I was a child in England before the war, Christmas pudding always contained at least one shiny new sixpence, and it was considered a sign of great good luck for the new year to find one in your helping of the pudding. "

" The relationship between stars and their fans is always ambivalent and often highly charged with contradictory and ambivalent emotions, of which the most powerful is need. "

" The more you can dream, the more you can do. "

" 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. "

" Nothing is more difficult than to recreate in all its complexity than a distant age, and not only to get it right but make it seem fresh and relevant. "

" In 'Gran Torino,' Eastwood moves towards the climax of the movie not by staging a shoot-out, but by putting his weapons to one side and confronting the bad guys armed only with a cigarette lighter, guessing that as he reaches for it they will think he's drawing a pistol. "

" The pleasure lies not in the cookies, but in the pattern the crumbs make when the cookies crumble. "

" To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it. "

" Hebron is a bone of contention between Israeli settlers and the Palestinians in part because Abraham is buried there, in the Tomb of the Patriarchs. "

" There are people to whom heroism under fire comes naturally and seemingly without effort, but Patton was not one of them. "