Michael Korda
Hebron is a bone of contention between Israeli settlers and the Palestinians in part because Abraham is buried there, in the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
It is not necessary to agree with the Arab point of view about their own history, but it is foolish to ignore it.
Most biographers are apt to be discouraged by the sheer volume of papers left behind by their subject.
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.
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.
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.
There are no French Puritans.
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.
In the Roman world, and in the worlds around it that Romans sought to subdue and control, the gods were merciless, frivolous, prone to set traps for humans, and largely indifferent to the unprivileged bulk of humankind, who in any case did not expect their fate in the afterworld to be any better than it had been on earth.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Speaking as somebody who is half English and half Hungarian, World War I still seems to me a familiar and seismic event, as if it had only just ended.
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.
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.
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.
Write it down. Written goals have a way of transforming wishes into wants; cant's into cans; dreams into plans; and plans into reality. Don't just think it - ink it!Collection: Dream
To succeed, it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.Collection: Success
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.Collection: Inspirational
If your position is everywhere, your momentum is zero.Collection: Basketball
To succeed, we must first believe that we can.Collection: Motivational
Concentration is the magic key that opens the door to accomplishment. By concentrating our efforts upon a few major goals, our efficiency soars, our projects are completed -- we are going somewhere. By focusing our efforts to a single point, we achieve the greatest results. The first rule of success, and the one that supercedes all others, is to have energy. It is important to know how to concentrate it, how to husband it, how to focus it on important things instead of frittering it away on trivia.Collection: Husband
Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don't want to read.Collection: Book
Luck can often mean simple taking advantage of a situation at the right moment, It is possible to make your luck by being always prepared.Collection: Mean
Concentration is the magic key that opens the door to accomplishment. By concentrating our efforts upon a few major goals, our efficiency soars, our projects are completed we are going somewhere.Collection: Keys
The image you project, in many circumstances, is far more valuable than your skills or your record of past accomplishments.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Believe
Gossip, unlike river water, flows both ways.Collection: Rivers
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.Collection: Funny
Male chauvinism is . . . a shrewd method of extracting the maximum of work for the minimum of compensation.Collection: Work
The first rule of success, and the one that supersedes all others, is to have energy. It is important to know how to concentrate it, how to husband it, how to focus it on important things instead of frittering it away on trivia.Collection: Husband
Concentration is the magic key that opens the door to accomplishment.Collection: Keys
We sell books, other people sell shoes. What's the difference? Publishing isn't the highest art.Collection: Art
You need your strength and you need as much support from family, friends, and loved ones as you can get.Collection: Support
The advice I would offer to any writer is that even when you think you have revised your book to the point where you cannot look at it again, it is time to sit down and revise it some more.Collection: Book
An once of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.Collection: Ambition