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.

This is a good time to ask apologists for the Islamic regime, who degrades Islam? Who imposes stoning, forced marriage of underage girls and flogging for not wearing the veil? Do such practices represent Iran's ancient history and culture, its ethnic and religious diversity? Its centuries of sensual and subversive poetry?

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.

I think Islam is in a sense, in crisis. It needs to question and re-question itself.

Unfortunately for governments like that of Iran, when they forbid something, people become more interested.

I am suddenly left alone again on the sunny path, with a memory of the rain.

Once we know of atrocities we cannot remain silent, and knowledge inevitably leads to an urge to protect the innocent.