Robert Caro Quotes

A collection of quotes by Robert Caro.

Robert Caro is an acclaimed American biographer and journalist, born on October 30, 1935, in New York City. He gained worldwide recognition for his extensive and meticulously researched biographies of two influential political figures, Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Caro began his career as a reporter for the New Brunswick Home News and later worked for Newsday. In 1974, he released his first book, "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York," for which he received the Pulitzer Prize. This groundbreaking work delved into the life and political career of Robert Moses, exploring his immense power and influence in shaping modern-day New York City.

Caro continued his exploration of political power in his multi-volume biography of President Lyndon B. Johnson. The series began with "The Path to Power" in 1982 and has since included three more volumes. These books detail Johnson's rise to power, his turbulent presidency, and his role in implementing civil rights legislation.

Known for his exhaustive research methods and attention to detail, Caro often spends years immersing himself in the subjects of his biographies. He has received numerous awards and accolades for his work, including multiple Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Critics Circle Awards, and the National Humanities Medal.

Throughout his career, Caro has provided readers with profound insights into the lives of influential figures, shedding light on the complex nature of political power and its impact on society.

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in , for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again.This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since , but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.

Christopher Hitchens