 Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery. |
| My predictions are notably inaccurate. |
| 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. |
| Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work. |
| The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage. |
| As you get older, you sometimes feel that it's harder and harder to get something new and wonderful to come into your life. |
| The Senate is an unknowing world. |
| 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 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. |
| 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. |
| Everyone believed the Senate could not really be led. It used to take so long to rise up through seniority. |
| 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 never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why. |
| 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. |
| I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet. |
| 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 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| I really wanted there to be something in my life that I enjoy just for the beauty of it. |
