Caro Quotes

Every time something goes wrong, you give up on us. You're killing me, Caro … I don't know what will happen…but neither do you. Maybe we'll make it…maybe we won't. But you're giving up before we've even tried. I don't understand. Why won't you take a chance? ~ Jane Harvey-Berrick

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

The wheel turns for all, caro Chase. It's the karma effect, Giulia cried, aping Ilenia. She could have never imagined that her words would become prophetic so soon. ~ Stefania Mattana

And, at last, I could hold him. I wrapped my arms around him and held him tightly, willing the darkness away, trying to heal him with my body, with my touch.
"I love you, Sebastian, please don't push me away. I love you."
"Oh God, Caro. I just don't know what I'm doing anymore; I'm so fucked up - I feel like I can't fucking breathe. Don't give up on me, Caro. Please don't give up on me. I need you, baby. I love you so much. I'm so sorry."
I could forgive anything now that he'd let me touch him. ~ Jane Harvey-Berrick

All losers exaggerate because they want you to know how bad they feel. ~ Mike Caro

False hope is sometimes much worse and sometimes much better than no hope. ~ Mike Caro

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

It was as a result of his courage that two white men were on trial for killing a Negro, a trial in which, whatever the result, there is a kind of majesty. And we owe that sight to Mose Wright, who was condemned to bow all his life, and had enough left to raise his head and look the enemy in those terrible eyes when he was sixty-four. ~ Robert A. 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

The common problem, yours and mine, everyone's/Is not to fancy what were fair in life/Provided it could be - but finding first/What may be and how to make it fair up to our means. ~ Robert A. Caro

Whenever people nominate the world's most important inventions (the internal combustion engine, the world wide web, battery storage), I always suggest the pill and the tampon ~ Jane Caro

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

Nothing he has ever done has been tainted by legality [Robert Moses quoting an anecdote about himself]. ~ Robert A. Caro

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

Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there." And he went beyond Douglass to espouse a doctrine of passive, non-violent resistance. "Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness," King said. "Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. ... This is a nonviolent protest. We are depending on moral and spiritual forces. ~ Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson was a master of self-justification. According to his biographer Robert Caro, when Johnson came to believe in something, he would believe in it "totally, with absolute conviction, regardless of previous beliefs, or of the facts in the matter." George Reedy, one of Johnson's aides, said that he "had a remarkable capacity to convince himself that he held the principles he should hold at any given time, and there was something charming about the air of injured innocence with which he would treat anyone who brought forth evidence that he had held other views in the past. It was not an act… He had a fantastic capacity to persuade himself that the 'truth' which was convenient for the present was the truth and anything that conflicted with it was the prevarication of enemies. He literally willed what was in his mind to become reality." Although Johnson's supporters found this to be a rather charming aspect of the man's character, it might well have been one of the major reasons that Johnson could not extricate the country from the quagmire of Vietnam. A president who justifies his actions only to the public might be induced to change them. A president who has justified his actions to himself, believing that he has the truth, becomes impervious to self-correction. ~ Carol Tavris, Elliot Aronson

Be happy, Caro, because that's what you deserve.
I love you, I have always loved you, and where I go after this world, I will always love you.
Sempre e per sempre. ~ Jane Harvey-Berrick

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. ~ Robert Caro

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

You come in off the street, through the doors of the theater. You sit down. The lights go down and the curtain goes up. And you're in another world. ~ Robert Caro

I know how you've always dreamed of an ordinary life, Caro, but why settle for ordinary when what we've got could be extraordinary? And I don't mean where and how we live. I mean being together, being friends, loving each other and trusting each other and being there for each other. We're so lucky to have found someone we can that that with. That's what's extraordinary. ~ Jessica Hart

When I was young, when the women of my generation were in their formative years, we were not taken seriously. Nor, just as damagingly, were our mothers, or our grandmothers. ~ Jane Caro

I'm pleased-very pleased-that you've finally made your choice. It's about time you came to your senses."
He arched a brow. "Even if it took a kidnapping to do it?"
She nodded sagely. "Even so." She paused, then more gently asked, "She's the right one for you, isn't she?"
He held her gaze, then nodded. "Yes. Definitely." He hesitated, then added, "I couldn't live without her."
Caro's smile widened until she was beaming. "Wonderful. That's how it should be."
He wasn't so sure he needed to hear that; the sense of vulnerability and dependency took some getting used to; he wasn't yet sure he'd mastered the knack. "Sadly, it seems that whenever I get close to a prospective wedding, I end up wounded. With you and Michael, I got shot and nearly died. This time, with me and Heather, I got gored and nearly died. I suppose I should be happy that Constance and Cordelia are already married."
Caro laughed. "You probably escaped them because they're so much older that you-you were only a lad when they wed." She paused, head tilting as she studied him. Still smiling, she went on, "You're a protector, you know. That's what you are-that's what you do. And now you've found the lady you're supposed to protect for the rest of your life." Her smile deepened. "Once you marry her, you'll be safe."
He humphed, but continued to smile, and didn't attempt to argue.
Because she was right.
Heather was the lady he would protect for the rest of his life. ~ Stephanie Laurens

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

You can use a biography to examine political power, but only if you pick the right guy. ~ Robert Caro

If you do everything, you'll win, ~ Robert A. Caro

Every generation builds on the work of the last, and pill or no pill, my generation could not have made the strides they have without all the work done by others. The same is true for future generations, although luckily for them the advancement of women is now snowballing. The legacy of the current crop of women over fifty - the accidental feminists - has given a leg up like no other to their daughter and granddaughters, not least through the #MeToo movement. ~ Jane Caro

Even if you had a feminist mother like mine, you still absorbed the messages about our limited future through the pores of your skin…We were baby-making machines, always had been, always would be, and we were supposed to be satisfied with that. The women who were beginning to assert their full and separate humanity were often caricatured as harpies, termagants and shrews. ~ Jane Caro

I wanted the kind of life my father had had, not the one I saw my mother struggling to get away from. I thought I was peculiar in this desire, but, as things have turned out, it seems such secret ambition burning in young female breasts were not so uncommon. ~ Jane 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

A laconic Texas lawmaker declined to use his considerable influence to intervene in a loud dispute between his colleagues. When asked why not, he said, They're not voting. If they're not voting, they're not passing any laws. If they're not passing any laws, they're not hurting anybody. ~ Robert A. Caro

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

As long as people allow themselves to be shocked, outraged or disgusted, there will be those who see that this happens, just so they can watch. ~ Mike Caro

Its size, the House was an environment in which, as one observer put it, members could be dealt with only in bodies and droves. ~ 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

Someday a political genius will come along and make the Senate work. ~ Robert Caro

People who sneer at a half a loaf of bread have never been hungry. George Reedy ~ Robert A. Caro

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

The right of a minority is so important in a democracy. ~ Robert Caro

I deliberately made an effort not to become an expert on the ballet. ~ Robert Caro

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

My predictions are notably inaccurate. ~ Robert Caro

Congress has a deep, vested interest in its own inefficiency. ~ Robert A. 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

President Kennedy's eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson's hammer blows are designed to make men act. ~ Robert A. Caro

Thanks to every generation of women from every culture on earth who ever lived, thanks to every woman who ever voiced a seditious thought or pursued her talents regardless of invisibility, my generation of women have been able to live a life different from that of every woman who came before us. ~ Jane Caro

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. ~ Robert Caro

That speech (Daniel Webster's) raised the idea of Union above contract or expediency and enshrined it in the American heart. ~ Robert A. Caro

Dark had meant Dora, had meant words and events sordid with self. Struggling to the light from Dora's darkness, Caro had acquired conscience and equilibrium like a profound, laborious education. Exercise of principle would always require more from her than from persons nurtured in it, for she had learned it by application of will. Caro would never do the right thing without knowing it, as some could. ~ Shirley Hazzard

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

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

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

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

Russell answered, Well, no - well, it certainly has permitted me to have more hours to work ... but I would not recommend it to anyone. If I had my life to do over again, I would certainly get married. ~ Robert A. Caro

I love you, Caro. I ain't an easy man to love. I'm grateful every damn day that you see past what's on the surface and know the man I am down deep. It's never scared you - even when it's scared me. You give me more happiness and love in one day than I ever thought I'd have in a lifetime. Thank you. ~ Lorelei James

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

Every conscious act requires risk. Every conscious act requires decision. Put these two facts together and you realize that the secret to life is not to avoid gambling but to gamble well. ~ Mike Caro

But I don't think that sculpture belongs in everyday life like a table does, or like a chair. ~ Anthony 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

Determining the essence of different points of view (what Lyndon Johnson called "listening"), ~ 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

My mum always said you get more fun at a Glasgow stabbing than an Edinburgh wedding. ~ Caro Ramsay

I used to work very long hours. Then I started to realize that the stuff that I was writing in the late afternoons, I was generally throwing out. So I quit earlier than I used to. ~ Robert Caro

On the rare occasions on which a movie was shown, there was as much suspense in the audience over whether the electricity would hold out to the end of the film as there was in the film itself. ~ Robert A. Caro

In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be. ~ Robert Caro

And, of course, the sentences would often be strung together in stories, many of them set in the Hill Country. They were about drunks, and about preachers - there was one about the preacher who at a rural revival meeting was baptizing converts in a creek near Johnson City and became overenthusiastic. One teenage boy was immersed for quite a long time, and when his head was lifted out of the water, one of the congregation called out from the creek bank, "Do you believe?" The boy said, "I believe," and the preacher promptly put his head under again. Again, when he emerged, someone shouted out, "Do you believe?" and again the boy said, gasping this time, "I believe." Down he went again, and this time, when the preacher lifted his head up, someone shouted, "What do you believe?" "I believe this son of a bitch is trying to drown me," the boy said. ~ Robert A. Caro

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

I have to hand it to the patriarchy. It has been a brilliant and comprehensive strategy to keep women under control, to create so many hurdles and levels of difficulty - both overt and covert, both in the workplace and in the home, both through the tax system and the lack of services - that women must expend much of their energy just overcoming them and have little left over for battling promotion and higher wages. Exhaustion is a feminist issue. ~ Jane 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

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

It's always been you, Caro. The first time I saw you, I thought you were the most beautiful girl that I'd ever seen. I thought you must be a princess like Cinderella. It's only ever been you. ~ Jane Harvey-Berrick

It is boomer women who, in my opinion. Have really made the greatest and most lasting difference. They have changed everything but they didn't grow up expecting to be revolutionary. They are accidental feminists. ~ Jane Caro

He was to become the lawmaker for the poor and the downtrodden and the oppressed. He was to be the bearer of at least a measure of social justice to those whom social justice had so long been denied. The restorer of at least a measure of dignity to those who so desperately needed to be given some dignity. The redeemer of the promises made by them to America. "It is time to write it in the books of law." By the time Lyndon Johnson left office he had done a lot of writing in those books, had become, above all presidents save Lincoln, the codifier of compassion, the president who wrote mercy and justice in the statute books by which America was governed. ~ Robert A. Caro

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

You can draw any kind of picture you want on a clean slate and indulge your every whim in the wilderness in laying out a New Delhi, Canberra, or Brasilia, but when you operate in an overbuilt metropolis, you have to hack your way with a meat ax. (Robert Moses) ~ Robert A. 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

Herman Brown was a businessman who wanted value for money spent. His relationships with politicians were measured by that criterion. ~ Robert Caro

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

Are you worried? About moving to Russia?" She smiled. "No, mio caro figlio. I'm not worried either." She kissed him. "My lovely, living boy," she said, kissing him between each word. "My hope" - kiss - "my happiness" - kiss - "my love, my life, my joy." Kiss, kiss, kiss. ~ Paullina Simons

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

A dark-haired man with electric-blue eyes hadn't taken his eyes off Caro since she'd sat down. He watched her like, well, a predatory wolf watched his mate.
Caro glanced over her shoulder and when she turned to face Nissa her expression was dark.
"Uh oh. "I'm sorry. Is mate the wrong word? I'm still not sure of all the correct --"
She shook her head and placed a gentle hand on hers. "I'm sorry, it's not that. No, he's not my mate. He's a very persistent... Never mind. I'm actually unmated. ~ Savannah Stuart

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

I trained myself to be organized. ~ Robert Caro

Far from women as a species being vain, flirty or irrational, overemotional, hysterical, lunatic or morally weak, what strikes me about women and their history is just how damn sane we have managed to stay. ~ Jane Caro

In that August of 1957, however, the cloakroom was often crowded, with senators talking earnestly on sofas and standing in animated little groups, and sometimes the glances between various groups were not comradely at all - sometimes, in fact, they glinted with a barely concealed hostility, and the narrow room simmered with tension, for the main issue before the Senate that summer was civil rights, a proposed law intended to make voting easier for millions of black Americans ~ Robert A. Caro

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

IS WHERE POWER GOES: the most significant factor in any equation that adds up to political power, Lyndon Johnson had assured his allies, is the individual, not the office; for a man with a gift for acquiring power, whatever office he held would become powerful - because of what he would make out of it. Johnson ~ 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

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

The rivers rose, and, when they receded, sucked more of the fertile soil back down with them, to run down the Pedernales to the Colorado, down the Colorado to the Gulf. And ~ Robert A. Caro

Famiglia isn't always blood, mio caro. Famiglia is built on bridges of love. Famiglia is there for you without condition. Famiglia supports you in your darkest moment of need. ~ Tillie Cole

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. ~ Robert Caro

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

Compra solamente lo necesario, no lo conveniete. Lo innecesario, aunque cueste un solo centimo, es caro.

Buy only what is necessary, not what is convenient. What is unnecessary, even if it only costs one cent, is expensive. ~ Seneca.

What would be the good of rushing? You want these books to last. ~ Robert Caro

Johnson told the doctors that "he enjoyed nothing but whiskey, sunshine and sex." Reedy found the moment "poignant," he was to recall. "Without realizing what he was doing, he had outlined succinctly the tragedy of his life. The only way he could get away from himself was sensation: sun, booze, sex. ~ Robert A. Caro

Are you afraid?" an interviewer asked him after the bombing, and there was a pause, and then Martin Luther King said, very firmly, "No, I'm not. My attitude is that this is a great cause, a great issue that we're confronted with, and that the consequences for my personal life are not particularly important. It is the triumph of a cause that I am concerned about, and I have always felt that ultimately along the way of life an individual must stand up and be counted, and be willing to face the consequences, whatever they are, and if he is filled with fear, he cannot do it. ~ 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

I write from seven to about noon. I used to try to write longer, but I read and I found that I was always getting myself tired by working in the afternoon and then I was just throwing out what I wrote in the afternoon, so writing then was counterproductive. ~ Robert Caro

You know,' Russell said, 'we could have beaten John Kennedy on civil rights, but not Lyndon Johnson.' There was a pause. A man was perhaps contemplating the end of a way of life he cherished. He was perhaps contemplating the fact that he had played a large role - perhaps the largest role - in raising to power the man who was going to end that way of life. But when, a moment later, Richard Russell spoke again, it was only to repeat the remark. 'We could have beaten Kennedy on civil rights, but we can't Lyndon. ~ Robert A. Caro