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" Ronald Reagan had a kind of shallow movie-star charisma - a combination of makeup and the skill of a good actor - but it wasn't the real thing, and was something that he could turn off when the cameras weren't running. "

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

Michael Korda

Stars

Life

Memoir

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

" The studio moguls were certainly bigger-than-life figures, but they were also tough and unforgiving street fighters to a man, redeemed only because they were also the butt of so many Hollywood jokes. "

" 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. "

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

" I'm always astonished when I go into Barnes & Noble at the number of people buying books, of course, but also at the variety of books they do buy and the extent to which they are not the big bestsellers. "

Michael Korda

People

Always

" The normal reaction of a publisher when faced with an author with a bee in his bonnet is to grab the check and run. "

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

" 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

Family

" My father fought on the side of the Central Powers, as a soldier in the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Army, my maternal grandfather fought in the British Army, on different sides, and both were so traumatized by the experience that they never talked about it. "

" Success was always critical to me. What it meant was winning enough praise and external admiration that I could feel myself to be a logical extension of my Uncle Alex, Uncle Zoli, and my father, in that order. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" Numbers of sales do not correspond to numbers of readers. "

" Some people are so famous that the legends about them and the cultural aftermath of their life altogether obscure the real human being. "

" Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself. "

" 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. "

" 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 real fans do not just admire the star of their choice, they identify with him or her, while the star, unlike Joan Crawford, comes to need the fans' love, admiration, and constant interest. "

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

" Success on any major scale requires you to accept responsibility... in the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have... is the ability to take on responsibility. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "