Until quite recently women's histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them.

They inhabited a lost world of splendour and brutality, a world dominated by religious change, in which there were few saints.

Anyone who has a continuous smile on his face conceals a toughness that is almost frightening.

People are not dying of lack of money but of lack of esteem and awareness. ("Kein Schwein ruft mich an")

Anyone can do the wrong thing if they really want to.

It is only framed in space that beauty blooms; only in space are events, and objects and people unique and significant and therefore beautiful.

A lie is real; it aims at success. A liar is a realist.

When I'm blogging, I think book writing is easier and vice versa. Writing is lonely work, and the good thing about blogging is that you have immediate feedback from commenters.

If I could snap my fingers and import France's health care system today, I'd do it.

John McCain has become the de facto running mate of George W. Bush.

City of rest! - as it seems to our modern senses, - how is it possible that so busy, so pitiless and covetous a life as history shows us, should have gone to the making and the fashioning of Venice!

Filmmakers are going to make films, just like painters are going to paint.