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" The Senate is an unknowing world. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" My predictions are notably inaccurate. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "