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

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.

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.

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!

Ancient history is oddly short on incorrect omens.

I don't like this ideaIt is too much focuson something I am trying to forgetI am afraidthat this attention to detailwill only fuel my anxiety

Lawyers are men who hire out their words and anger.

Lateral trust among colleagues is as important as vertical trust within the hierarchy.

That lasting things do, in fact, last.

If you don't look like the ruling class, bring your inhaler.

There were two saints in the desert, who had sewed thorns into all their clothes; and we seek for nothing but comfort!

There is never enough time to say our last word-the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submission, revolt.

The strange thing about writing is that it's so easy to write a novel. It is really easy. But it's getting there to the point where it's easy that's hard. The hard part is to get there.

In Michigan, a liberal democrat raised taxes and kept their government programs at the same level. And guess what? Their economy continued into the toilet, it continued down.

I don't own a computer. I have a nine-foot piano in my home to compose my messages. Why would I want a one-foot computer to do the same thing?