An interesting thing about book groups, it seems to me, is that there is no correlation between a brilliant book and a brilliant discussion. The first seems sometimes even to undermine the second.

parenting is an exercise in unintended consequences.

As always, an educated woman was a dangerous woman.

A rich, multi-dimensional tour of Naples, most brilliant, battered, and bewildering of cities, here fixed to the page with wit and élan. Splendid.

I'm a sucker for lost worlds. I was nostalgic even as a child. I was happiest in my hometown library in Adams, Mass., where nothing seemed to change.

When a woman teams up with a snake a moral storm threatens somewhere.

And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.

Motherhood is always an act of courage.

My next book is on the Salem witch trials. As a small-town Massachusetts girl, this makes me very happy. So does the reunion with documents!

No one in the modern world controls the wealth or territory that Cleopatra did.

Ancient history is oddly short on incorrect omens.

Freedom is within.Only God can give it to you.

There is nothing wrong with dreaming, but there is everything wrong with dreaming without any intention to make the dream a reality.

That was how she felt. Like a petal clinging to its stem, hopeful of staying, fearful of being cast away.

I'm a pretty good winner. I'm a terrible loser. And I rub it in pretty good when I win.

A highly intelligent man should take a primitive woman. Imagine if on top of everything else, I had a woman who interfered with my work.

The fact was I loved my wife to a degree that I found impossible to express, and so rarely did.

Change your story, change your life. Basically, that's what it is.

I was always the ugly duckling; I never got attention from girls.

People are difficult to rule, because of their knowledge.

The whole thing about working in front of the camera is to make people laugh when they're not supposed to.