Michael Korda
Michael Korda
Michael Kordais an English-born writer and novelist who was editor-in-Chief of Simon & Schuster in New York City...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
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It strikes me that people want to be engaged, and that those who go into a bookstore in a time of crisis are much more likely to be looking for explanation than for escapism.
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The freedom to fail is vital if you're going to succeed, most successful men fail time and time again, and it is a measure of their strength that failure merely propels them into some new attempt at success.
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Very well observed and touching story, wonderful eye for detail and a pleasure to read,
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My books are based on observing others, not myself.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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This is true enough, but success is the next best thing to happiness, and if you can't be happy as a success, it's very unlikely that you would find a deeper, truer happiness in failure.
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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.
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An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.
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The purely agitation attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject.
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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.
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An ounce of hypocracy is worth a pound of ambition.
I always thought of myself as a kind of literary bureaucrat. And that was never going to be enough for me.