My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse. I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood.

What's amazing to me is how many of the issues facing women in the ancient world still linger today. Take Odysseus' wife, Penelope, a brilliant, resourceful woman who ends up in a terrible situation: in her husband's absence, she is being held hostage in her own home by men who claim to be courting her. She tries to make them leave, but because she's a woman they refuse, blaming their bad behavior on her desirability.

I stopped watching for ridicule, the scorpion's tail hidden in his words. He said what he meant; he was puzzled if you did not. Some people might have mistaken this for simplicity. But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.

As an author, one of the most important things I think you can do once you've written a novel is step back. When the book is out, it belongs to the readers and you can't stand there breathing over their shoulders.

He is more worth to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

Perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.