It takes courage to die for a cause, but also to live for one.

With fear come the lies and the justifications that, no matter how convincing, lower our self-esteem.

I would like to say how much I resent people who say of the Islamic Republic that this is our culture - as if women like to be stoned to death, or as if they like to be married at the age of nine.

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.

A bad author can take the most moral issue and make you want to just never, ever think about that moral issue.

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

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