To my mind, the prose in a non-fiction work that's going to endure has to be of the same quality as the prose in a work of fiction that endures.

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 don't want to merely exist, Parker. I want to live. I want to leave the world with that one sweet moment.

We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.

These are mad times, but there have been a lot of mad times in the world.

Warmed-over loves and soups are generally not recommended.

Fights problems with bigger problems.

You speak what you believe, and you believe you’re doomed. If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout the years, it’s that what you believe is the impetus for your entire life.

It is only the educated who can produce or appreciate high art.

My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless.

I am a fruitarian and I will only eat leaves picked by virgins in the moonlight - Steve Jobs