Author Irving Stone has spent a lifetime studying greatness, writing novelized biographies of famous people … [He] was once asked if he had found a thread that runs through the lives of all these exceptional people. He said, "I write about people who sometime in their life…have a vision or dream of something that should be accomplished … and they go to work.
"They are beaten over the head, knocked down, vilified and for years they get nowhere. But every time
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