Power has for so long been a male construct that it distorted the shape of the first women who tried it on, only to find themselves in a sort of straitjacket.

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!

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

Those who are enslaved to their sects are not merely devoid of all sound knowledge, but they will not even stop to learn!

Writers start with a grain of sand, and then create a beach.

So Stephanie.. you wanna say let the bodies hit the floor... I would say... let the boobies hit the floor!

We might all be so afraid to be who we are, but in the end, it's really you're individual, unique qualities that make you attractive to people.

The duration of love in a being always depends upon the loved one. I create an emotion in you, as you create one in me. You do not create it in yourself.

She smiled for the first time, and he almost had to look away, as if something that nice didn’t belong in such a glum and gray place, as if he had no right to look at her expression.

Avoid making yourself the subject of conversation.

The thirst of desire is never filled, nor fully satisfied.

Most people are brought to faith in Christ not by argument for it but by exposure to it.

Cry later, but for now, let's enjoy the laughter.