154 Quotes by Michael Korda

I always thought of myself as a kind of literary bureaucrat. And that was never going to be enough for me.

My books are based on observing others, not myself.

Very well observed and touching story, wonderful eye for detail and a pleasure to read,

An ounce of hypocracy is worth a pound of ambition.

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.

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

We sell books, other people sell shoes. What's the difference? Publishing isn't the highest art.

The American system demands success, and in order to succeed we must first believe that we can. Yet our society, with its intolerance of failure and poverty, traps millions of people in positions where any kind of success seems impossible to contemplate, and in which failure itself is a kind of passive rebellion against their own misery and the social system which created it in the first place.To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.

Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don't want to read.