Michael Korda

Years of standing in the limelight portraying other people for large amounts of money does not usually lead to a high degree of self-examination, let alone self-criticism.

Never walk away from failure. On the contrary, study it carefully and imaginatively for its hidden assets.

Success has always been easy to measure. It is the distance between one's origins and one's final achievement.

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.

It used to be that the highest ambition of American novelists was to write 'the Great American Novel,' that great white whale of American fiction that would encompass all the American experience in one great book.

Your chances of success are directly proportional to the degree of pleasure you desire from what you do. If you are in a job you hate, face the fact squarely and get out.

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

One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.