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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. "
Michael Korda
Work
Us
Got
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" 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
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Successful
Strong
Special
" 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
" An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition. "
Michael Korda
Ounce
Pound
Worth
" I'm a relatively unfocused person. "
Michael Korda
Person
Relatively
" 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
" The big bestsellers aren't being created by Barnes & Noble. "
Michael Korda
Noble
Big
Being
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Best
Country
Know
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Luck
Good Luck
Child
" If you're a retailer and know that once a year you're going to get Mary Higgins Clark's book on a given date, you're going to have an awful lot of copies out there in time for that. You'd have to be simple-minded not to do that - although bookselling prior to 1950 never made that connection. "
Michael Korda
Time
Connection
Know
" 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
" I find that nonfiction writers are the likeliest to turn out interesting novels. "
Michael Korda
Interesting
Out
Turn
" Success has always been easy to measure. It is the distance between one's origins and one's final achievement. "
Michael Korda
Achievement
Success
Distance
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Side
Will
Bad
" 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
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Always
Right
Situation
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Past
Escape
Beast
" It is not necessary to agree with the Arab point of view about their own history, but it is foolish to ignore it. "
Michael Korda
History
View
Ignore
" Few things are more painful than being a successful writer born in a small country with an impenetrable language. "
Michael Korda
Small
Successful
Born
" Most biographers are apt to be discouraged by the sheer volume of papers left behind by their subject. "
Michael Korda
Discouraged
Most
Behind
" Never reveal all of yourself to other people; hold back something in reserve so that people are never quite sure if they really know you. "
Michael Korda
Yourself
Back
You
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Powerful
Relationship
Emotions
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Army
Father
Grandfather
" I always thought of myself as a kind of literary bureaucrat. And that was never going to be enough for me. "
Michael Korda
Me
Thought
Never
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Fresh
Nothing
Age
" Those of us who have not had the experience of being invaded by the Germans are in no position to criticize those who accommodated themselves to German occupation, with its ferocious punishments for those who expressed even the mildest opposition. "
Michael Korda
Position
Opposition
Experience