As you get older, you sometimes feel that it's harder and harder to get something new and wonderful to come into your life..

Robert Moses wasn't elected to anything. We're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected. He had more power than anyone, and he held ….

There used to be this feeling under Eisenhower and Kennedy and Roosevelt and Truman that government was a solution. Trust in the presidency fell prec….

Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work.

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't beli….

Whenever I go to work I wear a jacket and a tie, because I'm inherently quite lazy, and my books take so long to do, and my publishers don't bug me, ….

I sometimes feel that if your book sells more than 20 years, then there's something in it that you can say, gee, I did something that endures, that's….

You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you're in another world.

I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man. I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because de….

If things are going well, if the writing's coming along, I jump out of bed happy. And if the previous day has been bad, I get out of bed disgruntled..

I trained myself to be organized..

The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage..

Everything seems to be going faster and faster. It's really harder to create something that endures. The New York City Ballet has succeeded in doing ….

I've always felt that no one understands why some books of non-fiction endure and some don't, because there's not much understanding among many non-f….

Someday a political genius will come along and make the Senate work..

Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals..

Every president has to live with the result of what Lyndon Johnson did with Vietnam, when he lost the trust of the American people in the presidency..

To my mind, the prose in a non-fiction work that's going to endure has to be of the same quality as the prose in a work of fiction that endures..

You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy..

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery..

The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ball….