You have to be an extremely good reader to appreciate what a good writer is. There are some people who are completely insensitive to good writing.

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.

If a goal is only success oriented and not happiness oriented, then it will fill your life with stress, anxiety, and frustration.

The world is abounding with beauty. You are a demonstration of this.

Walk with me, memory to memory, the shared path, the mutual view. Walk with me. The past lies in wait. It is not behind. It seems to be in front. How else could it trip me as I start to run?

She was at the same table near the back where three nights ago I'd sat entranced by her songs. And where the two of us had talked like old friends.

You can walk into your room after walking out through the door, but you cannot come out of your grave after being buried into the soil.

Sometimes I found that in my happy moments I could not believe that I had ever been miserable.

There went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed . . . And all went to be taxed everyone into his own city.

I'll keep making records until I don't have more ideas for records.

After all, life is not a Hindi movie.

If our virtues did not go forth of us, it were all alike as if we had them not.