Robert Caro Quotes
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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.
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Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
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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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There's a theory, and I think the theory is right, that in order to make a change you've got to make the whole language of the page harmonious. Well, that's a lot easier with a computer.
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There's a feeling about it. You feel almost like a cabinetmaker, laying planks. There's a real feeling when you know you're getting it right. It's a physical feeling.
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The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage.
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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.
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Herman Brown was a businessman who wanted value for money spent. His relationships with politicians were measured by that criterion.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Someday a political genius will come along and make the Senate work.
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Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.
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My interest is in power. How power works.
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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.
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The right of a minority is so important in a democracy.
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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
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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.
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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
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I write from seven to about noon. I used to try to write longer, but I read and I found that I was always getting myself tired by working in the afternoon and then I was just throwing out what I wrote in the afternoon, so writing then was counterproductive.
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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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I never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why.
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You can lose a reader in a blink of an eye. If a person is an engineer or chemist or an anthropologist or whatever, you spoil the whole book for that person if there's obviously ignorance here. What's wrong with so much science fiction is that the science is so lousy that it isn't worth paying attention to.
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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.
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I trained myself to be organized.
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You have to be an extremely good reader to appreciate what a good writer is. There are some people who are completely insensitive to good writing.
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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.
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I try to have a mood or a rhythm for a chapter.
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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.
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