Stacy Schiff
Stacy Schiff
Stacy Madeleine Schiff is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American nonfiction author and guest columnist for The New York Times...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth26 October 1961
CountryUnited States of America
again call cleopatra dirty early enjoyed female great lived rights sovereigns time women
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.
convenient love relationships speculate
I wouldn't dare to speculate as to Cleopatra's falling in love. Her relationships are too convenient for that.
cluttered computer drafts far good hand increases legal less mechanical moves pencil primitive proved quickly reason recently screen study yellow
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.
amount miss music noisy provides
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.
became female intelligence male seems several thousands women
For the several thousands of years before they became firefighters and physicians, women were sirens, enchantresses, snares. At times it seems as if female powerlessness is male self-preservation in disguise. And for millennia, this has made for a zero-sum game: A woman's intelligence was a man's deception.
harbor lighthouse remains scuba
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.
along calls dubious high lack large lose neutrality number richard swiss
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.
I think with every book you realize you are partway through and there is something really elementary that you should have researched.
history male men point seems thousands written
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.
fictitious
Have you ever been married? Had that thing of someone calling you by a name not your own? It's unsettling. It's like a fictitious person.
courage editors finally friend novelist reply talking
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.'
authority case convey less manage possible rule seem woman
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.
entire idyllic three time whom
I have three children, each of whom is having an idyllic childhood, probably because I have been at the office the entire time.
class english grade ideal perfect positively school star subject thereafter
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.