"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."

"I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet."

"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."

"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."

"I really wanted there to be something in my life that I enjoy just for the beauty of it."

"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 went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work."

"As you get older, you sometimes feel that it's harder and harder to get something new and wonderful to come into your life."

"The Senate is an unknowing world."

"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."

"Everyone believed the Senate could not really be led. It used to take so long to rise up through seniority."

"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."

"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."

"Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery."

"The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage."