I like my subjects to be American, and not too dead, so I can interview people who knew them.

When most people think of Woodrow Wilson, they see a dour minister's son who never cracked a smile, where in fact he was a man of genuine joy and great sadness.

I said, ‘There’s one idea I’ve been carrying in my hip pocket for 35 years. It’s Woodrow Wilson.’

I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.

I am a compulsive worker. But I'm also a compulsive relaxer.

Clark Gable seemed fascinating all his life because there wasn't so much information about him. Today, you're on television all the time.

By the '40s, Sam Goldwyn is a very serious man. By the '50s, he's the dean of American producers. To the end, he was Hollywood's gray eminence.

There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken, things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher.

I don't know of a soul who packed more living into 72 years than Charles Lindbergh did.

The successful editor is one who is constantly finding newwriters, nurturing their talents, and publishing them with critical and financial success.

I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.

I'm so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.

I read my first book on Woodrow Wilson at age 15, and I was hooked.