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" Nobody understood how to use television for his own purposes better than Nixon, despite his poor showing against John F. Kennedy in the televised presidential debate. "

Michael Korda

Debate

Television

Own

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" Few things are more painful than being a successful writer born in a small country with an impenetrable language. "

" 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. "

" 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 attended first a military academy, then a public school in Beverly Hills, where we lived, and many of my classmates were the children of movie stars and studio executives. "

" 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

Nothing

" 'Il faut vivre' might almost be the French national motto from 1940 to June 1944, but who is to say ours would have been any different if the Germans had paraded victoriously through London and Generalfeldmarschall Von Runstedt made his headquarters at Claridge's? "

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

" My books are based on observing others, not myself. "

" 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. "

" It is not necessary to agree with the Arab point of view about their own history, but it is foolish to ignore it. "

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

" Frost was no match for Nixon - far from being an intrepid and challenging interviewer, he was a pushover for the great and the famous, always deeply impressed with the fact that here he was, David Frost, putting questions to - Richard Nixon! "

" 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

Glamorous

Far

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

Michael Korda

Rise

Rise Above

" 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. "

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

" Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity. "

" The big bestsellers aren't being created by Barnes & Noble. "

" 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. "

" Surrounded by high-paid publicity people and professional ego massagers, movie stars, like politicians, almost invariably come to believe that they are nicer, more charming, and more beloved than they appear to be to a casual observer, and that their stories about their careers are universally fascinating. "

" When the Second World War came to an end in Europe, my uncle Sir Alexander Korda was the first filmmaker to reopen offices in Germany and Austria. "

" In 1918, Germany suffered the ghastly consequences of defeat; France suffered those of victory, the price of which was to divide and embitter French politics and culture and lead to its defeat in 1940. "

" The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own. "

" I find that nonfiction writers are the likeliest to turn out interesting novels. "

" To have a childhood surrounded by people like Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh sounds glitzy, but for years I wanted to repress it. I couldn't take that kind of power and success. "

" 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.' "