I was trying to learn about Lyndon Johnson when he was young and creating his first political machine in the Texas hill country. I moved there for th….

There's a theory, and I think the theory is right, that in order to make a change you've got to make the whole language of the page harmonious. Well,….

You can lose a reader in a blink of an eye. If a person is an engineer or chemist or an anthropologist or whatever, you spoil the whole book for that….

Sometimes during a ballet I'll look around and see all these rows of intent faces, concentrating on this beautiful thing up on the stage..

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….

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 ….

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

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

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….

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

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..

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

I trained myself to be organized..

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

Someday a political genius will come along and make 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….

You have to be an extremely good reader to appreciate what a good writer is. There are some people who are completely insensitive to good writing..

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….

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….