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

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.

Smile: Happiness Is Right Under Your Nose!

Your world is only as big as your intellectual level.

Appeal in law: to put the dice into the box for another throw.

I've always been interested in science - one of my favourite books is James Watson's 'Molecular Biology of the Gene.'

Swing your swing. I know, I did.

If any of you get hernias in this tug-of-war against the Army, I'll pay to get them fixed.

The economic victims of the era are men who who know someone has made off with their future- and they suspect the thief is a woman.

In January '77 I went out to LA and have been here 26 years.

Honesty first; then courage; then brains - and all are indispensable.

I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.