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" When someone has spent a lifetime trying to survive a death sentence, the last thing you want is your children uncovering what you have been at such pains to conceal. "
Michael Korda
You
Someone
Death
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" The bestseller list is the tip of the iceberg. "
Michael Korda
List
Iceberg
Tip Of The Iceberg
" 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
Me
Family
" '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? "
Michael Korda
Say
Motto
London
" 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
" 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
" Nothing in the Middle East is ever forgotten or forgiven. "
Michael Korda
Nothing
Middle
Forgotten
" The fastest way to succeed is to look as if you're playing by somebody else's rules, while quietly playing by your own. "
Michael Korda
Rules
You
Own
" An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition. "
Michael Korda
Ounce
Pound
Worth
" Many years ago, I had the pleasure of editing a book by Joan Crawford, who, like Norma Desmond, was still a big star; it was just the movies that had gotten smaller. "
Michael Korda
Book
Editing
Pleasure
" I don't give plots to Harold Robbins or Graham Greene, because they don't need them, but a lot of authors do. "
Michael Korda
Them
Authors
Because
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Long
Queen
Reading
" 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
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Children
Classmates
School
" Numbers of sales do not correspond to numbers of readers. "
Michael Korda
Readers
Numbers
Correspond
" The first thing to be said about 'Prague Winter,' former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's new book, is that she very wisely chooses to confront early on in it her apparent surprise at learning late in life that she was born Jewish. "
Michael Korda
Winter
Book
Learning
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Way
Hard
Past
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Measure
She
Only
" The purely agitation attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject. "
Michael Korda
Attitude
Not Good Enough
Enough
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Film
Design
Detail
" The French consider themselves the guardians of the world's culture and do not bother to hide the fact, which is annoying, but Paris is still where good Americans want to go when they die - and Brits, Russians, and Chinese as well, these days. "
Michael Korda
Hide
Good
Paris
" 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
" 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
" I never met Peter O'Toole, but he one was of those rare actors whose success was defined by a single role. His incandescent performance in David Lean's 'Lawrence of Arabia' is one that nobody who saw it will ever forget. "
Michael Korda
Success
Performance
Nobody
" 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
" 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
Me
Nothing
" I find that nonfiction writers are the likeliest to turn out interesting novels. "
Michael Korda
Interesting
Out
Turn
" 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. "
Michael Korda
Turn
Kind
Good
" I did meet Sen. Robert Kennedy, and it taught me something about political charisma. "
Michael Korda
Political
Meet
Me
" 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
" 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