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

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

" 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 am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term. "

" 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 that. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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 trained myself to be organized. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" My predictions are notably inaccurate. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "