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.

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've always felt that no one understands why some books of non-fiction endure and some don't, because there's not much understanding among many non-fiction writers that the narrative is terribly important.

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.

In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.

I was trying to learn about Lyndon Johnson when he was young and creating his first political machine in the Texas hill country. I moved there for three years. You had to learn that world

Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.