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

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.

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

The Senate is an unknowing world

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

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

The moment the curtain rose on that first ballet, I knew something wonderful and new had come into my life. I can still see the first scene. The ballet was Divertimento No. 15

The New York City Ballet is obviously speaking to a whole new generation and bringing it the same wonder and beauty that it brought previous generations

I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet.

I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.

The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage.

you can't fight with who you are

Success is not greedy as people think but insignificant. That's why it satisfies nobody.

It is only to the gardener that time is a friend, giving each year more than he steals.

I see no reason for recording the obvious.

We judge people and initiatives by their results, and we expect events to happen for good, understandable reason. But our clear visions of inevitability are often only illusions.

An inner process stands in need of outward criteria.

The largest business in American handled by a woman is the Money Order Department of the Pittsburgh Post-office; Mary Steel has it in charge.

Even in Japan, I don't think that the game culture is established. For example, my father will watch movies but games don't appear in his life at all, I think that that's sad.

I have never seen such extreme partisanship, such bitter partisanship, and such forgetfulness of the fate of our fathers and of the Constitution.

The payment for sins can be delayed. But they cant be avoided.