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.

I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a fa

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.

I don't think of my books as being biographies. I never had

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.

Life Work Power Man

At the ballet, you really feel like you're in the presence o

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.

Life Rest

There used to be this feeling under Eisenhower and Kennedy a

There used to be this feeling under Eisenhower and Kennedy and Roosevelt and Truman that government was a solution. Trust in the presidency fell precipitously under Johnson - real lows. And it's never come back. It's a trend that, if you're liberal, is really discouraging.

Trust

I really wanted there to be something in my life that I enjo

I really wanted there to be something in my life that I enjoy just for the beauty of it.

Beauty

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the plac

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

Great

The New York City Ballet is obviously speaking to a whole ne

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.

Beauty

Now, for this book I had to learn the world of the Senate, w

Now, for this book I had to learn the world of the Senate, which is really for all that's written about the Senate, an unknowing world and its mores, and the way things work with subcommittees and all. I loved learning about that.

Learning

You know, my first three or four drafts, you can see, are on

You know, my first three or four drafts, you can see, are on legal pads in long hand. And then I go to a typewriter, and I know everybody's switching to a computer. And I'm sort of laughed at.

Legal

I am trying to make clear through my writing something which

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.

History