Poor reading, like poor writing, is imposing what you already know on texts. You should go into reading to discover, not to reaffirm what you know.

It is amazing how, when all possibilities seem to be taken away from you, the minutest opening can become a great freedom.

What dazzles us in Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra are not the alluring mythologies about the evasive queen, but the astonishing if rare historical facts that Schiff has meticulously and lovingly excavated. Schiff offers not just Cleopatra's story but the story of an amazing era, one that has vanished but still affects us, questioning the way we look at myth, history, and ourselves.

You need imagination in order to imagine a future that doesn't exist.

None of us can avoid being contaminated by the world's evils; it's all a matter of what attitude you take towards them.

Every culture has something to be ashamed of, but every culture also has the right to change, to challenge negative traditions, and create to new ones.

It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else’s shoes and understand the other’s different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them.