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.

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.

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

There used to be this feeling under Eisenhower and Kennedy and Roosevelt and Truman that government was a solution. Trust in the presidency fell precipitously under Johnson - real lows. And it's never come back. It's a trend that, if you're liberal, is really discouraging.

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.

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.