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" 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. "

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" Long Island is shaped the way it is largely because of Robert Moses. Long Island is a perfect example of how political power shapes people's lives every day. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" Now, for this book I had to learn the world of the Senate, which is really for all that's written about the Senate, an unknowing world and its mores, and the way things work with subcommittees and all. I loved learning about that. "

" 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. "

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

" The Senate is an unknowing world. "

" 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. "

" I trained myself to be organized. "

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

" There's a real feeling when you know you're getting it right. It's a physical feeling. "

" The right of a minority is so important in a democracy. "

" The New York City Ballet is obviously speaking to a whole new generation and bringing it the same wonder and beauty that it brought previous generations. "

" I think President Obama has done more than he is given credit for. "

" 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. "

" I really wanted there to be something in my life that I enjoy just for the beauty of it. "

" 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 don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" I finish what I have to do in the office. "

" I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet. "

" If you really want to show power in its larger aspects, you need to show the effects on the powerless, for good or ill - the human cost of public works. That's what I try to do, show not only how power works but its effect on people. "

" Most Sundays, with the exception of football Sundays, I work, because I don't take days off as long as I'm working on something that's supposed to be all in the same mood. "

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