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" Cleopatra was on a political mission to save her country and her power, but what we remember about her are these two famed seductions, which are a matter of politics, not a matter of love. "
Stacy Schiff
Political
Politics
Power
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" No one in the modern world controls the wealth or territory that Cleopatra did. "
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" I have three children, each of whom is having an idyllic childhood, probably because I have been at the office the entire time. "
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" Strangely enough, politics may just be the one realm in which having kids imposes no penalty on women. Kids are practically a necessity. For scientists, or Supreme Court justices, or chief executives, or the woman who wants to learn to fly F-l8s off an aircraft carrier, it works differently. "
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" 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. "
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" A woman can never be too rich or too thin, but until very, very recently, she could be too powerful, for which - if she wasn't smart enough to camouflage herself - she generally paid the price. "
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" We don't know how Cleopatra spent her days, but we do know how other Hellenistic monarchs spent their days. There has been a great amount of scholarship in the last 30 years about education in the Hellenistic world and women in the Hellenistic world. We now know how an upper-class woman was educated in her day. "
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Education
" What we know about Cleopatra's looks is based purely on her coin portraits. Engraving was imperfect, and that when you are a ruler and you ask for a coin to be engraved with your likeness on it, you are probably trying to project a certain air of authority. "
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Trying
You
Looks
" No biographical subject is ever on hold with the orthodontist. If there's a dry spell, it's your job to curtail or eliminate it. "
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Your
Dry
Hold
" In 'Plutarch,' her voice begins to come out; there are actual 2,000-year-old quotes from Cleopatra, and they are sly and saucy. "
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Voice
Saucy
Out
" When finally I mustered the courage to tell a novelist friend that I was talking to editors about a biography, her reply was, 'Oh, that's okay. That's not a real book.' "
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Book
Courage
Friend
" Cleopatra had one great advantage. She lived at a time when female sovereigns were not anomalies. And when women enjoyed rights they would not again enjoy for another 2,000 years. You could call them early feminists, if I may use a dirty word. "
Stacy Schiff
You
Great
Enjoy
" I think with every book you realize you are partway through and there is something really elementary that you should have researched. "
Stacy Schiff
Book
Realize
Think
" I checked to see if there'd been a really good book published in the last few decades. Then I started with what Cleopatra would have read, asking myself, 'What can we know about her education?' It turns out to be a very great deal, and bizarrely, no one had written about that before. "
Stacy Schiff
Great
Book
Education
" 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! "
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Reunion
Girl
Book
" No one sits on the stoop when she's a kid and thinks, 'I want to be a biographer when I grow up.' "
Stacy Schiff
She
Up
Want
" Life-writing calls for any number of dubious gifts: A touch of O.C.D., a lack of imagination, a large desk, neutrality of Swiss proportions, tactlessness, a high tolerance for archival dust. Most of all it calls for an act of displacement. 'To find your subject, you must in some sense lose yourself along the way,' is Richard Holmes's version. "
Stacy Schiff
Yourself
Imagination
Tolerance
" 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. "
Stacy Schiff
Think
History
Book
" For thousands of years, men have written history, so it seems to me that most of what we've read is from the male point of view. "
Stacy Schiff
View
Me
Point Of View
" I can't write a line without music - it provides just the right amount of distraction to keep me focused. Clearly, I still miss the noisy roommates. "
Stacy Schiff
Roommates
Music
Me
" From every ancient source, we have testimony to Cleopatra's irresistible charm, as Plutarch has it, to her ability to speak many languages including, as he puts it, the language of flattery and essentially, to be able to turn people to her will - really a great political genius, in that respect. "
Stacy Schiff
Great
Speak
Respect
" Certainly, I am writing as a 21st-century woman, so I am much more inclined to view her as a three-dimensional woman. I think we keep coming up with this stubborn problem of a woman being judged by her appearance rather than her accomplishments. We are much more inclined to ask: was Cleopatra beautiful? "
Stacy Schiff
Beautiful
I Am
Writing
" Of course, women have long exercised influence behind the scenes. A few thousand years ago this drove Aristotle to distraction: 'What difference does it make whether women rule or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same.' "
Stacy Schiff
Long
Behind
Influence
" Women enjoyed rights in Egypt they would not again enjoy for more than 2,000 years. They owned ships, ran vineyards, filed lawsuits, practiced medicine. Their husbands supported them after divorce. Their power was unprecedented. "
Stacy Schiff
Enjoy
Divorce
Medicine
" We're talking about, essentially, the Roman historians, who wrote Cleopatra into the story mostly so that they could talk about the rise of Rome. And that is one of the problems, of course, in recounting her life. She's only ever apparent to us when there is a Roman in the room, or when her story intersects with the rise of Rome. "
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Life
Rise
Rome
" The desk thing is a problem for me. The ideal one would be vast and perfectly clear. Yet the bane of the biographical existence is paper; if you're 'an artist under oath' you're writing from a mountain of documentation. "
Stacy Schiff
Me
You
Writing
" The biographer has two lives: The one she leads, and the one she ultimately understands. "
Stacy Schiff
She
Understands
Lives
" 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. "
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Reaction
Anxiety
Influence
" Recently a study proved that working from a larger, less cluttered computer screen increases concentration. I could have told them that. And yes, I write first drafts with a mechanical pencil and a yellow legal pad. There's good reason for this primitive behavior: I am a crackerjack typist. My hand moves far more quickly than my brain. "
Stacy Schiff
Pencil
I Am
Legal
" You have to scuba dive in the Alexandrian harbor if you want to see what remains of the lighthouse of Cleopatra's day, and the water in the Alexandrian harbor is not really something you want to come into contact with. "
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Day
Dive
See
" I went out to the desert where Cleopatra camped out with her mercenary army. It's a desolate outpost. Nothing has changed since her day. You realize how far she had to travel. Not only is it a good 150 miles against the current, you can't take a ship. "
Stacy Schiff
You
Ship
Good