We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

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.

If it's coming near the end of a chapter and I'm really getting into it, I tend to get up earlier and earlier, just because I'm excited to get to work.

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.

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

Someday a political genius will come along and make the Senate work.