I try to have a mood or a rhythm for a chapter.

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.

Where your heart is, there is your treasure of happiness.

So now, all alone or not, you gotta walk ahead. Thing to remember is if we're all alone, then we're all together in that too.

I really don't know enough about the structure of fiction.

When people asked me, "Do you get high to go onstage?" I could never understand the question. I mean, I'd been high since eight that morning. Going onstage had nothing to do with it.

I think I can lead a pretty anonymous life, yeah.

We usually say there is always a ‘Plan B,’ but there is no ‘Planet B’.

I never really considered acting as a career. I kind of fell into it. Originally, I wanted to be a painter.

When you are grateful to the rain, do not forget also the clouds! When appreciating something, be fair enough also to appreciate the sources that created it!

Few ever see what is not already inside their heads.

Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.