You have to be an extremely good reader to appreciate what a good writer is. There are some people who are completely insensitive to good writing.

Herman Brown was a businessman who wanted value for money spent. His relationships with politicians were measured by that criterion.

The Senate is an unknowing world

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.

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.

To my mind, the prose in a non-fiction work that's going to endure has to be of the same quality as the prose in a work of fiction that endures.

Whenever I go to work I wear a jacket and a tie, because I'm inherently quite lazy, and my books take so long to do, and my publishers don't bug me, so it's so easy to fool yourself into thinking you're working harder than you really are.