Art Is As Useful As Bread.

It Is Only Through Literature That One Can Put Oneself In Someone Else’s Shoes And Understand The Other’s Different And Contradictory Sides And Refrain From Becoming Too Ruthless. Outside The Sphere Of Literature Only One Aspect Of Individuals Is Revealed. But If You Understand Their Different Dimensions You Cannot Easily Murder Them.

If I Turned Towards Books, It Was Because They Were The Only Sanctuary I Knew, One I Needed In Order To Survive, To Protect Some Aspect Of Myself That Was Now In Constant Retreat.

Thus The Regime Has Deprived Iranian Women Not Just Of Their Present Rights, But Also Of Their History And Their Past.

I Believe That It Is Only Through Empathy, That The Pain Experienced By An Algerian Woman, A North Korean Dissident, A Rwandan Child Or An Iraqi Prisoner, Becomes Real To Me And Not Just Passing News. And It Is At Times Like This When I Ask Myself, Am I Prepared - Like Huck Finn - To Give Up Sunday School Heaven For The Kind Of Hell That Huck Chose?

What Dazzles Us In Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra Are Not The Alluring Mythologies About The Evasive Queen, But The Astonishing If Rare Historical Facts That Schiff Has Meticulously And Lovingly Excavated. Schiff Offers Not Just Cleopatra's Story But The Story Of An Amazing Era, One That Has Vanished But Still Affects Us, Questioning The Way We Look At Myth, History, And Ourselves.