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.

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 never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why.

Among the reasons that you go into journalism, I suppose, are some rather idealistic, even foolish reasons. In my case one of the reasons was I wanted to explain how things really work, how political power really works.

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.

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

Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.