Caro Quotes & Sayings

I trained myself to be organized. — Robert Caro

Neither, it turned out, was politics. His views on government were strong, if a trifle simplistic. The cause of the Depression, he felt, was Al Capone. "The trouble with the nation's economy," he declared, was simply Prohibition, which "makes it possible for large-scale dealers in illicit liquor to amass tremendous amounts of currency"; the "present economic crisis," he explained, was due to the "withdrawal of billions of dollars from the channels of legitimate trade" by these bootleggers. — Robert A. Caro

He talked a lot about girls, too. His brother, Sam Houston Johnson, recalls that more than once, when he visited his brother at San Marcos, Lyndon, coming back into the room naked after a shower, would take his penis in his hand, and say: "Well, I've gotta take ol' Jumbo here and give him some exercise. I wonder who I'll fuck tonight. — Robert A. Caro

When you start somewhere, you've started. — Mike Caro

The city governments of the United States are the worst in Christiandom - the most expensive, the most inefficient, and the most corrupt. — Robert A. Caro

Emerging from the caucus, Johnson told reporters that he had no plans to release his delegates; My name will stay as long as the American people are interested. — Robert A. Caro

their anxiety, justified or not, was genuine, — Robert A. Caro

Upon moving to Cornwall in 1991, I became bewitched by its enchanting timeless beauty, which captured my heart and holds me still. Brooding and mysterious, the south-eastern edge of Bodmin Moor provided the wild backdrop against which the introduction to my magical training and love of nature began. — Carole Carlton

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

I can't help it, I'm an addict.'
'Don't corrupt the word 'addict,' Goddamnit,' Caro said. 'I'm fed up with everybody claiming they're addicted. You're just a ponderer, Sidda, that's all. — Rebecca Wells

I never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why. — Robert Caro

I've seen the future, and I survived the test of time. — Mike Caro

I was trying to learn about Lyndon Johnson when he was young and creating his first political machine in the Texas hill country. I moved there for three years. You had to learn that world. — Robert Caro

Strength with which President Kennedy dispatched his enemies" - a tribute couched in rather remarkable words: Johnson described Kennedy "when he looks you straight in the eye and puts that knife into you without flinching. — Robert A. Caro

The Widdern - the non-magical world, where science rules and many people believe that magic only exists in books. They're wrong. — Caro King

I'm a journalist - I'm not Robert Caro. I have a day job, and a pretty consuming one - a joyfully consuming one. — David Remnick

Thank God for you, Caro. — Jane Harvey-Berrick

After you do one thing, you've got one thing done. — Mike Caro

The ballet embodies the notes of music. And sometimes you almost feel like you can see the notes dance up there on the stage. — Robert Caro

There's a real feeling when you know you're getting it right. It's a physical feeling. — Robert Caro

Aces are larger than life and greater than mountains. — Mike Caro

Humphrey was to say, and now he was planning to continue doing so, to use the chairmanship, in Humphrey's words, "to hang on to [the power] he had wielded as Majority Leader" as a "de facto Majority Leader"; Johnson "had the illusions that he could be in a sense, as Vice President, the Majority Leader." His proposal violated what was to these senators one of the Senate's most sacred precepts - its independence of the executive branch; he was proposing that a member of that branch preside over their meetings. — Robert A. Caro

Senator Harding, who declared in his inaugural address that We seek no part in directing the destinies of the world. — Robert A. Caro

Johnson was insulated from reality by his hopes and dreams. — Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson. The junior congressman saw two things that no one else saw. The first was a possible connection between two groups that had previously had no link: conservative Texas oilmen and contractors - most notably his financial backer, Herman Brown, of Brown & Root - who needed federal contracts and tax breaks and were willing to spend money, a lot of money, to get them; and the scores of northern, liberal congressmen, running for re-election, who needed money for their campaigns. The second was that he could become that link. — Robert A. Caro

Now that's a sight for sore eyes, Sebastian. Maybe I should just leave you here: the hotel maids might appreciate that. Or, better still, maybe I'll take a photograph of you on my phone. Dont worry, I wont post it on the internet, it'll just be my screen saver. — Jane Harvey-Berrick

The air of compromise is rarely appreciated fully by men of principle. C. Vann Woodward — Robert A. Caro

But this belief demonstrated only that Lyndon Johnson simply had not grasped that there was another world, a world in which Douglas and Lehman were not crazies but heroes, in which principles mattered far more than they did in the Senate. In addition, Lyndon Johnson had not fully appreciated that it didn't matter what he did for the liberals in Social Security and housing so long as he was not on their side on the "great issue." He should have appreciated this. — Robert A. Caro

Time would never cure it. Almost half a century later, when she was the only one of the nine Kennedy siblings still living, the author would ask Jean Kennedy Smith about her brother Bobby and his depression over Jack's death. "When did he come out of that?" she repeated, and then said, "I don't think he ever came out of that. — Robert A. Caro

(Lyndon) Johnson created his own theater. — Robert A. Caro

I'm forever hopeful," he said. "That's what friends do. They hope. They have faith in each other."

"Well, I have faith that she'll forget," I said, hiking my backpack up onto my shoulders. "You have to be a realist with Caro."

"I'm a hopeful realist," Drew said. "I'm a healist! Like those guys on TV late at night that cure people of cancer." He grinned down at me. — Robin Benway

We have talked long enough ... about civil rights,' Lyndon Johnson had said. 'It is time ... to write it in the books of law' - to embody justice and equality in legislation. — Robert A. Caro

For the record, Caro?" "Yeah?" "Hard as a fucking rock. — Robin York

The soft aroma of old worn cotton from a linen chest, the lingering smell of tobacco on an angora sweater; Jergen's hand lotion, sauteed green peppers and onions; the sweet, nutty smell of peanut butter and bananas, the oaken smell of good bourbon. A combination of lily of the valley, cedar, vanilla, and somewhere, the lingering of old rose. These smells are older than any thought. Mama, Teensy, Neecie, and Caro, each one of them had an individual scent, to be sure. But this is the Gumbo of their scents. This is the Gumbo Ya-Ya. This is the internal vial of perfume I carry with me everywhere I go. — Rebecca Wells

The Founders' armor had resisted every attempt by others to force them open; the Senate had been designed as the "firm" body; it had become too firm - too firm to allow the reforms the Republic needed. Never had the dam been more firm than during the last decade, the decade since the conservative coalition had learned its strength. During that decade, despite the mandate of three presidential elections, it had stood across and blocked the rising demand for social justice, had stood so solidly that it seemed too strong ever to be breached. In January, 1949, when Lyndon Johnson arrived in it, it was still standing. — Robert A. Caro

Luther King gave people "the feeling that they could be bigger and stronger and more courageous than they thought they could be," Bayard Rustin said - in part because of the powerful new weapon, non-violent resistance, that had been forged on the Montgomery battlefield. — Robert A. Caro

Oh, and just an aside here, but it drives me nuts when I hear the current federal education minister, Christopher Pyne, say that the people who benefited from free university education in the 1970s were almost all from the ranks of the better off. What he doesn't say is that they were also mostly women who had been denied the chance of a university education by their fathers, who had preferred to pay the fees for their sons rather than their daughters. Whitlam's higher education reforms were hugely important for women from the generations before mine and that has had equally important positive results for them, their daughters and our whole society. We should not forget that. Rant over. As — Jane Caro

I am a lucky player; a powerful winning force surrounds me. — Mike Caro

The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand. — Robert A. Caro

Only that when men found themselves at the mercy of forces too big for them to fight alone, government - their government - help them fight. What were the demands for railroad and bank regulation, for government loans, for public-works projects, but an expression of a belief that after men have banded together and formed a government, they have a right, when they are being crushed by conditions over which they have no control, to ask that government to extend a helping hand to them - if necessary, to fight for them, to be their champion? — Robert A. Caro

If the end doesn't justify the means, what does? (Robert Moses) — Robert A. Caro

I, sir, take a different view of the whole matter. I look upon Ohio and South Carolina to be parts of one whole - parts of the same country - and that country is my country. ... I come here not to consider that I will do this for one distinct part of it, and that for another, but ... to legislate for the whole. And finally Webster turned to a higher idea: the idea - in and of itself - of Union, permanent and enduring. — Robert A. Caro

When Silent Cal Coolidge noted that You don't have to explain something you haven't said, — Robert A. Caro

Caro, you're a pretty girl, but I'd no sooner fuck a good waitress than I'd key my own car — Kelly Braffet

For me all games are finals. — Juan Ramon Lopez Caro

Decades of the seniority rule had conferred influence in the Senate not on men who broke new ground but on men who were careful not to. — Robert A. Caro

(Until the end of their lives, these men and women would tell stories about the summer they followed Lyndon Johnson and his Flying Windmill around Texas; as Oliver Knight of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram would write about one trip, "That mad dash from Navasota to Conroe in which I dodged stumps at 70 MPH just to keep up with that contraption will ever be green in my memory.") At the landing site, there would be the brief respite — Robert A. Caro

I can't, Caro, it's out of my hands now. But I promise it's temporary. I just ... after all this time ... I wanted us to be able to spend more than a few hours together." He stared at his hands. "I don't know when I'll see you again," he mumbled. "I've already waited ten years. — Jane Harvey-Berrick

If an opponent won't watch you bet, then you probably shouldn't. — Mike Caro

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will"; — Robert A. Caro

Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately. — Robert A. Caro

Caro sat without speaking, turning toward him her look that was neither sullen nor expectant but soberly attentive; and, once, a glance in which tenderness and apprehension were great and indivisible, giving unbearable, excessive immediacy to the living of these moments. Paul had seen that look before, when they first lay down together at the inn beyond Avebury Circle. — Shirley Hazzard

Dignity was a luxury in a fight with Lyndon Johnson, a luxury too expensive to afford. — Robert A. Caro

The belief that "a political system created in a much simpler economic era still affords the people effective control through their votes over the complex industrial state which has come into being" is a popular delusion. — Robert A. Caro

He (LBJ) played on their fears as he played on their hopes. — Robert A. Caro

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

Adventurers tend to prance about the ladder of success, fearing less the sensation of a great fall than the humility of hanging idle. — Mike Caro

It's hard to convince a winner that he's losing. — Mike Caro

It's not easy to play a match every two days. — Juan Ramon Lopez Caro

I think President Obama has done more than he is given credit for. — Robert Caro

But you can't prove God exists. And isn't that what all science is ultimately about? Proving theories about the universe?"
"Provability is not truth, Caro. Godel's incompleteness theorem tells us that, if we didn't already know it intuitively, which we do. — Anna Jarzab

Speaking out as he had never before done in Congress, Lyndon Johnson in 1947 opposed most of Truman's Fair Deal. — Robert A. Caro

I have nothing against women. Some of my best wives were women. — Mike Caro

Caro needed to be important. It was boring and typical and transparent as hell, even to her, but she couldn't turn it off any more than she could quit having arms. — Kelly Braffet

Lyndon Johnson, as majority leader of the United States Senate, he made the Senate work. — Robert Caro

Every man in this room wants you, Caro. I'm so fucking proud, I can't stop smiling. — Jane Harvey-Berrick

I rode Caro's bike down a hill with no hands, and then I went sock shopping because I was sad to say goodbye to Alfred, and the socks were cute, but there was this purple lace bra." She ground to a halt, cheeks steaming. "It was the same color as Alfred. — Debora Geary

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

Fairy Tales do not generally come true. If you mary a frog, he stays a frog. — Ina Caro

Ballet is sort of a mystery to me. And I don't want to unravel that mystery. — Robert Caro

He not only had the gift of "reading" men and women, of seeing into their hearts, he also had the gift of putting himself in their place, of not just seeing what they felt but of feeling what they felt, almost as if what had happened to them had happened to him, too. — Robert A. Caro

Hospitality has always been a potent political weapon. Moses used it like a master. Coupled with his overpowering personality, a buffet often did as much for a proposal as a bribe. — Robert A. Caro

The enormous power held by each of the southern committee chairmen individually was multiplied by their unity, by what White called a "oneness found nowhere else in politics." The symbol was the legendary "Southern Caucus," the meetings of the twenty-two southern senators which were held in the office of their leader, Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia, whenever crisis threatened - meetings that were, White said, "for all the world like reunions of a large and highly individualistic family whose members are nevertheless bound by one bond." In those meetings, the southern position was agreed upon, its tactics mapped, its front made solid. — Robert A. Caro

I always tell the truth, so I don't need a good memory to remember what I said") - in — Robert A. Caro

Recalling his mother's endless drudgery, (Senator) Richard (Russell) Jr. was to say that he was ten years old before he saw his mother asleep; previously, he had thought that mothers never had to sleep. — Robert A. Caro

He saw that at its center were Coretta and Yoki, unharmed. And then, having made sure of that, Martin Luther King became very calm, with what Branch calls "the remote calm of a commander." Stepping back out on the porch, he held up his hand for silence. Everything was all right, he told the crowd. "Don't get panicky. Don't do anything panicky. Don't get your weapons. If you have weapons, take them home. He who lives by the sword will perish by the sword. Remember that is what Jesus said. We are not advocating violence. We want to love our enemies. I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love." The crowd was silent now, as King continued speaking. He himself might die, he said, but that wouldn't matter. "If I am stopped, this movement will not stop. If I am stopped, our work will not stop. For what we are doing is right. What we are doing is just. — Robert A. Caro

Inside the mind of 'America's Mad Genius' is not necessarily a place you want to visit. — Mike Caro

Art comes from art: I remember going to the Matisse show and seeing how Matisse had taken one of his own paintings, worked from it and transformed it, and that had led on to the next one and the next. — Anthony Caro

And how do you confess to a beautiful woman that you can't fulfill a relationship because you're tormented by the presence of another woman that doesn't even exist? — Victoria Caro

Good fiction is life with all the boring bits taken out, not with all the hardship taken out. — Caro Clarke

Scale is very, very important, like the scale of a person is very important. It's to do with the size of our space, the fact they are big sculptures, they are still human scale. — Anthony Caro

I like new ballets because they're totally new. As you get older, new experiences are harder and harder to come by, so it's pretty great to have a new experience. — Robert Caro

Steel is such a nice material to use. It can move. It's terribly easy, you just stick it or you cut it off, and bang! you're there: it's so direct. I think Manet was very direct, he didn't prepare his canvases like Courbet, he just put paint straight on and it's very like that with steel. — Anthony Caro

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

Why did you start looking for a Dom?" "A vanilla lover couldn't give me the extremes." "Yet no Dom has won you. Why?" "I haven't found a Dom who will give me the extremes, Sir." "I want the truth, Caro." "You're right. I've found some extremes, but not the right kind. Not the right Dom." "Why, Caro? What was missing in them?" "Judgment, honor, gallantry. There's a huge difference between a consensual sadist in the BDSM lifestyle, and a complete sadist. To me, a male who just likes to hurt things and has no compassion is a complete sadist, and less than a man. A male who consensually torments a woman to heighten lovemaking and bring them pleasure - a man who cares for her - is a true Dom, and the most desirable kind of man. — Marilyn Lakewood

MR. CALHOUN. Never, never. MR. WEBSTER. What he means he is very apt to say. MR. CALHOUN. Always, always. MR. WEBSTER. And I honor him for it. — Robert A. Caro

But although the cliche says that power always corrupts, what is seldom said ... is that power always reveals. When a man is climbing, trying to persuade others to give him power, concealment is necessary ... But as a man obtains more power, camouflage becomes less necessary. — Robert A. Caro

Jim Rowe and George Reedy had made him understand the growing importance in liberal intellectual circles of thirty-nine-year-old Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., a noted Harvard historian with a gift for incisive phrasemaking, — Robert A. Caro

Many gamblers think they're being singled out by fate as a target for cruel jokes. They feel they alone in all the universe are being tortured, experimented upon by some unknown force. — Mike Caro

He is not the leader of great causes, but the broker of little ones. — Robert A. Caro

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

When you come into the presence of a leader of men, you know you have come into the presence of fire; that it is best not incautiously to touch that man; that there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him. - WOODROW WILSON — Robert A. Caro

In the beginning, everything was even money. — Mike Caro

From the earliest beginnings of Lyndon Johnson's political life - from his days at college when he had captured control of campus politics - his tactics had consistently revealed a pragmatism and a cynicism that had no discernible limits. — Robert A. Caro

Debates educated a nation. That educative function had atrophied during decades of making decisions behind closed doors. — Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson's sentences were the sentences of a man with a remarkable gift for words, not long words but evocative, of a man with a remarkable gift for images, homey images of a vividness that infused the sentences with drama. — Robert A. Caro

The second most powerful man in the country." All his life Lyndon Johnson had been taking "nothing jobs" and making them into something - something big. And now, no sooner — Robert A. Caro

I have repeatedly said that success requires concerted efforts and support of the fans. — Juan Ramon Lopez Caro

Quietly, dispassionately, Russell would make sure the senator understood not only the reasons why he should take the same position on the bill that Russell was taking, but the reasons why he should take an opposing position. — Robert A. Caro

It is not clear who will bring to the Whitehouse those useful commodities of vivid language, a sense of history and most important - a sense of humour, but Johnson himself will provide many other attributes. He is effective precisely because he is so determined, industrious, personal and even humourless, particularly in dealing with Congress. ( ... ) Kennedy had a detached and even donnish willingness to grant a merit in the other fellow's argument. Johnson is not so inclined to retreat and grants nothing in an argument, not even equal time. Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately. This may not be the most attractive quality of the new administration but it works. The lovers of style are not too happy with the new administration, but the lovers of substance are not complaining. — Robert A. Caro