151 Quotes by Stacy Schiff

The interesting thing about Cleopatra is that she is such a shape-shifter. I mean through history we've all molded her to our times and our places. So there's room for a movie for her, but I don't think it will hew to the book.

In an ideal world, the perfect biographical subject would have been the star of his penmanship class at grade school - and would thereafter write an English that positively sings.

I once interviewed David Herbert Donald, the Lincoln historian, and we talked about how one deals with the secondary sources and the previous biographies. He said something which kept coming back to me as I worked on Cleopatra, which was: 'There's no further new material; there are only new questions.'

Insofar as there is an anxiety of influence for a biographer, it may be that each new book is undertaken in reaction to the previous book.

I have three children, each of whom is having an idyllic childhood, probably because I have been at the office the entire time.

In 'Plutarch,' her voice begins to come out; there are actual 2,000-year-old quotes from Cleopatra, and they are sly and saucy.

How does a woman in authority convey that authority? Is it possible for a woman to rule without sounding shrill? Is it possible for a woman to manage without manipulating? All of these things seem to me to be very much at the fore today, and were no less the case 2,000 years ago.

I don't think there is ever objective biography. Our vision of our subject is always shaped by who we are. So I do, of course, think the biographer's view is always something to keep in mind.

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.