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" 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 democracy shapes our lives. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Robert Caro

People

Lost

Live

" 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 timeless. "

" 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. "

" 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 it for 48 years. "

Robert Caro

Years

Power

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

" In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be. "

" You know, my first three or four drafts, you can see, are on legal pads in long hand. And then I go to a typewriter, and I know everybody's switching to a computer. And I'm sort of laughed at. "

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

" Everyone believed the Senate could not really be led. It used to take so long to rise up through seniority. In two years Lyndon Johnson is assistant leader of his party. In four years he is the leader of his party. "

" What would be the good of rushing? You want these books to last. "

" I like new ballets because they're totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it's pretty great to have a new experience. "

" 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. "

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

" 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 three years. You had to learn that world. "

" I never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why. "

" 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 ballet was Divertimento No. 15. "

" I trained myself to be organized. "

" The Senate is an unknowing world. "

Robert Caro

World

Senate

" At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence of something outside the rest of your life. Higher than the rest of your life. "

" If it's coming near the end of a chapter and I'm really getting into it, I tend to get up earlier and earlier, just because I'm excited to get to work. "

Robert Caro

End

Work

" 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 that. "

" 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 believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. "

" There used to be this feeling under Eisenhower and Kennedy and Roosevelt and Truman that government was a solution. Trust in the presidency fell precipitously under Johnson - real lows. And it's never come back. It's a trend that, if you're liberal, is really discouraging. "

" 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, so it's so easy to fool yourself into thinking you're working harder than you really are. "

Robert Caro

Fool

Thinking

" I try to have a mood or a rhythm for a chapter. "

" I used to work very long hours. Then I started to realize that the stuff that I was writing in the late afternoons, I was generally throwing out. So I quit earlier than I used to. "

" It's very easy to fool yourself that you're working, you know, when you're really not working very hard. I mean, I'm very lazy. So for me, I would always have an excuse, you know, to go - quit early, go to a museum, you know. So I do everything I can to make myself remember this is a job. I keep a schedule. "

" You know, we're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected. "

" Nobody believes this, but I write very fast. "