If you let go of me now,” I whispered, stretching against him, “it could be another six hundred years before you find me again. Are you willing to take that risk?

When the old men fight, the young people die.

The Amazons is a stupendous achievement--a long-anticipated centerpiece in the great puzzle of humankind. The story of these forbidden women, silenced for so long by the rigidity of traditional scholarship, is as exciting and surprising as a bestselling murder mystery; I simply couldn't put it down. Through scholarly brilliance and passion, Adrienne Mayor has opened the door to a forgotten world of gender equality, and her book ought to be required reading in every college history course.

While at Oxford in 1999, I met Jonathan Fortier, who is a Montreal-born Canadian. Despite the challenges of a transatlantic relationship, we remained keen on each other and eventually married in 2002.

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.

Verona is a very beautiful city, but Siena just never ceases to fascinate me.

You were right and I was wrong. When life hurts more than death, it is not worth living.