What we know about Cleopatra's looks is based purely on her coin portraits. Engraving was imperfect, and that when you are a… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
Reality does not easily give up meaning; it's the biographer's job to clobber it into submission. You're meant not only to tame… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
I think with every book you realize you are partway through and there is something really elementary that you should have researched. — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
You have to scuba dive in the Alexandrian harbor if you want to see what remains of the lighthouse of Cleopatra's day,… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
The desk thing is a problem for me. The ideal one would be vast and perfectly clear. Yet the bane of the… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
Have you ever been married? Had that thing of someone calling you by a name not your own? It's unsettling. It's like… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
Cleopatra had one great advantage. She lived at a time when female sovereigns were not anomalies. And when women enjoyed rights they… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
I went out to the desert where Cleopatra camped out with her mercenary army. It's a desolate outpost. Nothing has changed since… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
Life-writing calls for any number of dubious gifts: A touch of O.C.D., a lack of imagination, a large desk, neutrality of Swiss… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
Recently a study proved that working from a larger, less cluttered computer screen increases concentration. I could have told them that. And yes, I… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
“She did not believe Fate as painstaking as her husband; she was more inclined to take matters into her own hands. She had ample… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
What we know about Cleopatra's looks is based purely on her coin portraits. Engraving was imperfect, and that when you are a ruler and… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
No one in the modern world controls the wealth or territory that Cleopatra did. — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
“Against a powerful enchantress there is no contest. Against a woman who ensnares a man in the coils of her serpentine intelligence - in… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
Cleopatra stood at one of the most dangerous intersections in history; that of women and power. Clever women, Euripides had warned hundreds of years… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
“Nabokov complained he was afflicted with total recall, an affliction of which he could be miraculously cured by the presence of a biographer.” — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
“History existed to be retold, with more panache but not necessarily greater accuracy.” — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
“Véra assumed her married name almost as a stage name; rarely has matrimony so much represented a profession. It was one of the ironies… — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
When a woman teams up with a snake a moral storm threatens somewhere. — Stacy Schiff Copy Share Image
