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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 Caro
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: October 30
Historian
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Robert Allan Caro
Robert A. Caro
Books
Understanding
Terribly
Felt
Understands
Book
Narrative
Many
Endure
Important
Writers
Much
Among
Always
Fiction

More quotes by Robert Caro

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The right of a minority is so important in a democracy.
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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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
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The Senate is an unknowing world
Robert Caro
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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
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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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I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet.
Robert Caro
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Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery.
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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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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Nobody believes this, but I write very fast.
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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There's a theory, and I think the theory is right, that in order to make a change you've got to make the whole language of the page harmonious. Well, that's a lot easier with a computer.
Robert Caro
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My predictions are notably inaccurate
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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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 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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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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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