I think it is important for readers to know that it is possible to bring intellectualism and idealism to the White House and still be political enough to advance an agenda.

When most people think of Woodrow Wilson they see a dour ministers son who never cracked a smile where in fact he was a man of genuine joy and great sadness.

I read my first book on Woodrow Wilson at age 15 and I was hooked.

I like my subjects to be American and not too dead so I can interview people who knew them.

I developed a mania for Fitzgerald – by the time Id graduated from high school Id read everything hed written. I started with The Great Gatsby and moved on to Tender Is the Night which just swept me away. Then I read This Side of Paradise his novel about Princeton – I literally slept with that book under my pillow …

Im so blessed to have such enlightened parents. It must have been very hard to watch their able-bodied son lock himself up in his old room for most of his 20s.

I think a biography is only as interesting as the lives and times it illuminates.

I am a compulsive worker. But Im also a compulsive relaxer.

I dont know of a soul who packed more living into 72 years than Charles Lindbergh did.

There is always a certain leap of faith that editors have made with their nonfiction writers. If the trust is broken things can get very embarrassing for the writers and the publisher.

There are hundreds of books about Woodrow Wilson but I have an image of him in my mind that is unlike any picture I have seen anywhere else based on material at Princeton and 35 years of researching and thinking about him.

By the 40s Sam Goldwyn is a very serious man. By the 50s hes the dean of American producers. To the end he was Hollywoods gray eminence.

Clark Gable seemed fascinating all his life because there wasnt so much information about him. Today youre on television all the time.

After Lindbergh my publisher asked whom I wanted to write about next. I said Theres one idea Ive been carrying in my hip pocket for 35 years. Its Woodrow Wilson.