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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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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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The Senate is an unknowing world
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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I never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why.
Robert Caro
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Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
Robert Caro
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The right of a minority is so important in a democracy.
Robert Caro
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Nobody believes this, but I write very fast.
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
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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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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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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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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 trained myself to be organized.
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
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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
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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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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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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 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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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