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

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 try to have a mood or a rhythm for a chapter.

As you get older, you sometimes feel that it's harder and harder to get something new and wonderful to come into your life.

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.

I've always felt that no one understands why some books of non-fiction endure and some don't, because there's not much understanding among many non-fiction writers that the narrative is terribly important.

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