Robert Caro quotes

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery. (Robert Caro)
We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
Robert Caro
You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy.
Robert Caro
I am trying to make clear through my writing something which I believe: that biography- history in general- can be literature in the deepest and highest sense of that term.
Robert Caro
I never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why.
Robert Caro
As you get older, you sometimes feel that it's harder and harder to get something new and wonderful to come into your life.
Robert Caro
Everything seems to be going faster and faster. It's really harder to create something that endures. The New York City Ballet has succeeded in doing that.
Robert Caro
I sometimes feel that if your book sells more than 20 years, then there's something in it that you can say, gee, I did something that endures, that's timeless.
Robert Caro
I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet.
Robert Caro
I was trying to learn about Lyndon Johnson when he was young and creating his first political machine in the Texas hill country. I moved there for three years. You had to learn that world.
Robert Caro
Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work. (Robert Caro)
Sometimes during a ballet I'll look around and see all these rows of intent faces, concentrating on this beautiful thing up on the stage.
Robert Caro
The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage.
Robert Caro
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.
Robert Caro
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.
Robert Caro
I like new ballets because they're totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it's pretty great to have a new experience.
Robert Caro
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.
Robert Caro
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.
Robert Caro
The Senate is an unknowing world.
Robert Caro
My predictions are notably inaccurate.
Robert Caro
You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you're in another world. (Robert Caro)
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.
Robert Caro
The right of a minority is so important in a democracy.
Robert Caro
In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.
Robert Caro
I think President Obama has done more than he is given credit for.
Robert Caro