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.

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

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

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.

I've never met anybody who says they don't like the World Cup. If you're a soccer fan or not, everybody loves watching it, and I think it could be the same for other sports.

The advertisers who believe in the selling power of jingles have never had to sell anything.

Some minds improve by travel, others, rather, resemble copper wire, or brass, which get the narrower by going farther.

The American dream? We don't have a dream in Britain because we're bloody awake!

I don't want to see any art-writing gobbledygook or overblown words in an essay about me. If a smaller, simpler word will do - use it.

I always stayed married to my husband! Always, until the day he died! It's not true that we were separated!

Retirement is like a long vacation in Las Vegas. The goal is to enjoy it to the fullest, but not so fully that you run out of money.

There are moments when you can only stand and stare, watching the world forget you as you remove yourself from it - when you overcome it and cease to exist as the person you were.

Whoever we love, she or he is always under the bright spotlight on our stage and anything else is just a decor under the dimness!

Mama always had a way of explaining things so I could understand them.