The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he’s not telling you,” he said. “The most important thing he has to say is what he’s trying no… - Robert A. Caro

Johnson, who had been reading a newspaper in the back seat, “suddenly … lowered the newspaper and leaned forward,” and said, “ ‘Chief, does it bother you when people don’t call you by name?’ ” Parker was to recall that “I answered cautiously but honestly, ‘Well, sir, I do wonder. My name is Robert Parker.’ ” And that was evidently not an answer acceptable to Johnson. “Johnson slammed the paper onto the seat as if he was slapping my face. He leaned close to my ear. ‘Let me tell you one thing, nigger,’ he shouted. ‘As long as you are black, and you’re gonna be black till the day you die, no one’s gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a goddamn piece of furniture.’

complete; the part of me that kept leading me to think of new avenues of research that, even as I thought of them, I felt it was crucial to head down. It wasn’t something about which, I had learned the hard way, I had a choice; in reality I had no choice at all. In my defense: while I am aware that there is no Truth, no objective truth, no single truth, no truth simple or unsimple, either; no verity, eternal or otherwise; no Truth about anything, there are Facts, objective facts, discernible and verifiable. And the more facts you accumulate, the closer you come to whatever truth there is. And finding facts — through reading documents or through interviewing and re-interviewing — can’t be rushed; it takes time. Truth takes time. But that’s a logical way of justifying

And he worked himself, worked himself. He had made up his mind to be President, and he was demonic in his drive.