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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

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Robert Caro
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: October 30
Historian
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Robert Allan Caro
Robert A. Caro
Wanted
Famous
Always
Shapes
Never
Democracy
Men
Lives
Life
Use
Tell
Biography
Political
Examine
Power
Biographies

More quotes by Robert Caro

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My predictions are notably inaccurate
Robert Caro
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If it's coming near the end of a chapter and I'm really getting into it, I tend to get up earlier and earlier, just because I'm excited to get to work.
Robert Caro
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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
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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
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I never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why.
Robert Caro
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The Senate is an unknowing world
Robert Caro
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You can lose a reader in a blink of an eye. If a person is an engineer or chemist or an anthropologist or whatever, you spoil the whole book for that person if there's obviously ignorance here. What's wrong with so much science fiction is that the science is so lousy that it isn't worth paying attention to.
Robert Caro
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Whenever I go to work I wear a jacket and a tie, because I'm inherently quite lazy, and my books take so long to do, and my publishers don't bug me, so it's so easy to fool yourself into thinking you're working harder than you really are.
Robert Caro
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I've always felt that no one understands why some books of non-fiction endure and some don't, because there's not much understanding among many non-fiction writers that the narrative is terribly important.
Robert Caro
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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
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Nobody believes this, but I write very fast.
Robert Caro
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I trained myself to be organized.
Robert Caro
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There's a feeling about it. You feel almost like a cabinetmaker, laying planks. There's a real feeling when you know you're getting it right. It's a physical feeling.
Robert Caro
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Everyone believed the Senate could not really be led. It used to take so long to rise up through seniority. In two years Lyndon Johnson is assistant leader of his party. In four years he is the leader of his party.
Robert Caro
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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.
Robert Caro
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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
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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
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I used to work very long hours. Then I started to realize that the stuff that I was writing in the late afternoons, I was generally throwing out. So I quit earlier than I used to.
Robert Caro
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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.
Robert Caro
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Herman Brown was a businessman who wanted value for money spent. His relationships with politicians were measured by that criterion.
Robert Caro