Kate Andersen Brower > Quotes

“If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much - Jackie Kennedy”
― Kate Andersen Brower, First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies

“The Elms was the Johnsons’ Washington, D.C., mansion and it was equipped with a shower like nothing the staff had ever seen: water charging out of multiple nozzles in every direction with needlelike intensity and a hugely powerful force. One nozzle was pointed directly at the president’s penis, which he nicknamed “Jumbo.” Another shot right up his rear.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“But most accounts agree that the residence workers’ devotion to President George H. W. Bush was more than customary—it was genuine, almost profound. The Bushes were generally easy to please, and the residence workers found themselves quickly at ease with them.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“Working for the Clintons took the biggest physical toll on the perfectionist chef. They hosted twenty-nine state dinners during their time in the White House,”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“It hurt so much when I lost my mother, I know how it feels.' Hilary told a friend whose mother had recently passed away. 'I will never get over it.' In a 2015 interview with ABC News, Hillary got emotional when she mentioned her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who died in 2011. Dorothy grew up in poverty and at eight years old she was sent from Chicago to California to live with her grandparents after her parents divorced. 'She told me every day you've got to get up and fight for what you believe in, no matter how hard it is. I think about her a lot, I miss her a lot. I wish she were her with me.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies

“President Carter’s three adult sons spent plenty of time at the White House during his presidency. Florist Ronn Payne, who started at the White House during the Nixon administration and left under Clinton, said he had to do more than freshen the floral arrangements in the Carters’ sons’ rooms on the third floor. “I would regularly have to move bongs,” he said. (The unabashed pot-smoking in the president’s house was confirmed by another member of the household staff on the condition of anonymity.) If any of the Carter sons were found with the illegal drug on the street they would have been arrested, but they smoked inside the White House without fear of any repercussions. President”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“While people are sorting through our shoes and our hair and whether we cut it or not . . . whether we have bangs . . . We take our bangs and we stand in front of important things that the world needs to see, and eventually people stop looking at the bangs and they start looking at what we are standing in front”
― Kate Andersen Brower, First Women

“Bush, Barbara. Barbara Bush: A Memoir. New York: Scribner, 1994. Bush, Laura. Spoken from the Heart. New York: Scribner,”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“The Clintons spent roughly $400,000 redecorating the White House, all financed by private donations. But the effort raised some eyebrows, both within and outside the mansion.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“RULE NO. 2: RESPECT THE OFFICE AND ONE ANOTHER There’s a reverence there for that office that is independent of you, and if you don’t feel that you shouldn’t be there. —Barack Obama”
― Kate Andersen Brower, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump

“Carpenter, Liz. Ruffles and Flourishes. New York: Doubleday, 1970.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“Chief Electrician Bill Cliber, who worked on nine transitions, said that the Clintons’ arrival was by far the most difficult.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“Yet the very thing that the staff most pride themselves on—their ability to fade into the background—can also be dehumanizing.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“RULE NO. 7: TREASURE “THE MOST PERFECT HOUSE IN THE UNITED STATES” You cannot walk in those old rooms without feeling or hearing the footsteps of those who have gone before you. —Richard Nixon”
― Kate Andersen Brower, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump

“Hillary wanted to have more influence than Nancy Reagan or Eleanor Roosevelt; she wanted a seat at the table, and her husband was eager to give it to her.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies

“RULE NO. 4: DON’T BE TOO PROUD TO ASK FOR HELP No one knows how rough this job is until after he has been in it a few months. —John F. Kennedy”
― Kate Andersen Brower, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump

“told the head usher. She could not understand why the maids and butlers were so quiet around her. She worried that they didn’t like her. She soon found”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“GERALD FORD AND JIMMY CARTER: “I WAS GRIEVED, BUT HONORED TO FULFILL MY PROMISE”
― Kate Andersen Brower, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump

“While people are sorting through our shoes and our hair and whether we cut it or not . . . whether we have bangs . . . We take our bangs and we stand in front of important things that the world needs to see, and eventually people stop looking at the bangs and they start looking at what we are standing in front of.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, First Women

“RULE NO. 9: FAMILY COMES FIRST Nothing can ever be written that will drive a wedge between us—nothing at all. —George H. W. Bush, in a 1998 letter to his sons George W. and Jeb”
― Kate Andersen Brower, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump

“worked at the White House”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“Mrs. Clinton, there’s a white man downstairs in a wheelchair in the Yellow Oval Room asking me for some Ronald Reagan souvenirs. He said he’s a Republican, not a Democrat.” The new First Lady laughed. “Yeah, I know, George, that’s my dad.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies

“He said when he got up in the middle of the night he ran into the bathroom door. But we’re pretty sure she clocked him with a book. —RESIDENCE WORKER ON LIFE IN THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE DURING THE MONICA LEWINSKY SCANDAL T”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“When Harry Truman left office, in 1953, the only income he could rely on was a World War I veteran’s pension of about $110 a month. As president he had earned $75,000 a year during his first term and $100,000 during his second, which is more than $1 million in today’s dollars.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump

“Its 132 rooms, 147 windows, 28 fireplaces, 8 staircases, and 3 elevators are spread across the 6 floors—plus 2 hidden mezzanine levels—all tucked within what appears to be a three-story building. The”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“Fields, Alonzo. My 21 Years in the White House. New York: Crest Books, 1961. Gibbs, Nancy, and Michael Duffy, The President’s Club: Inside the World’s Most Exclusive Fraternity (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012).”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

“That’s why you’re married, you do things for the other person when you sense that they need you, even if you don’t know why they need you.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, First Women

“RULE NO. 5: UNITE IN TRAGEDY To paraphrase Mr. Jefferson: We are all Democrats, we are all Republicans, because we are all Americans. —Ronald Reagan”
― Kate Andersen Brower, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump

“Capitol complex is its 8.9-million-pound, 288-foot-tall cast-iron dome called the Rotunda.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, The Hill: Inside the Secret World of the U.S. Capitol

“Just as presidents are part of a lifelong club, so too are first ladies: presidents are members of the world’s most selective fraternity, and first ladies are members of the world’s most elite sorority.”
― Kate Andersen Brower, First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies