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

Robert Moses wasn't elected to anything. We're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected. He had more power than anyone, and he held it for 48 years

I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man. I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives

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 used to work very long hours. Then I started to realize that the stuff that I was writing in the late afternoons, I was generally throwing out. So I quit earlier than I used to.

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.

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