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

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" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" The Senate is an unknowing world. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "