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

I read my first book on Woodrow Wilson at age 15, and I was hooked.

I'm so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.

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

I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.

The successful editor is one who is constantly finding newwriters, nurturing their talents, and publishing them with critical and financial success.

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.