There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken, things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher.

I don't know of a soul who packed more living into 72 years than Charles Lindbergh did.

By the '40s, Sam Goldwyn is a very serious man. By the '50s, he's the dean of American producers. To the end, he was Hollywood's gray eminence.

I said, ‘There’s one idea I’ve been carrying in my hip pocket for 35 years. It’s Woodrow Wilson.’

I like my subjects to be American, and not too dead, so I can interview people who knew them.

I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.

I am a compulsive worker. But I'm also a compulsive relaxer.