The Senate is an unknowing world

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.

You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you're in another world

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.

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.

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.

The Senate is an unknowing world