Robert Caro
Robert Caro
Robert Allan Carois an American journalist and author known for his celebrated biographies of United States political figures Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth30 October 1935
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
book thinking ties
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.
zero book writing
I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had any interest in doing a book just to write the life of a great man. I had zero interest in that. My interest is in power. How power works.
believe book taught
We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.
book understanding important
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.
book ignorance eye
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.
book years sometimes
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
good
What would be the good of rushing? You want these books to last.
power taught
You know, we're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected.
days exception supposed work
Most Sundays, with the exception of football Sundays, I work, because I don't take days off as long as I'm working on something that's supposed to be all in the same mood.
ballet favorite four seen time
My favorite ballet is Jewels. I don't think I've seen that more than four times. And each time you see it, you see something new in it.
power
When you have enough power to do what you always wanted to do, then you see what the guy always wanted to do.
beauty life
I really wanted there to be something in my life that I enjoy just for the beauty of it.
I finish what I have to do in the office.
quit remember
It's very easy to fool yourself that you're working, you know, when you're really not working very hard. I mean, I'm very lazy. So for me, I would always have an excuse, you know, to go - quit early, go to a museum, you know. So I do everything I can to make myself remember this is a job. I keep a schedule.