Stacy Schiff
Author
1961-10-26
Books by Stacy Schiff
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Quotes by Stacy Schiff
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It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life.
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Blind passion was one thing, all-knowing intimacy a rarer commodity.
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History existed to be retold, with more panache but not necessarily greater accuracy.
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It is a dangerous thing to have the same men in both the prophecy and the history business.
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And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.
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As Dio observed later, democracy sounded very well and good, —but its results are seen not to agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but is a most practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man than many of them.
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Confronted afterward, she claimed no knowledge of that bedroom tryst; she did not intend to be held responsible for men's dreams.
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And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.
Read quote -
It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life.
Read quote -
History existed to be retold, with more panache but not necessarily greater accuracy.
Read quote -
Blind passion was one thing, all-knowing intimacy a rarer commodity.
Read quote -
Confronted afterward, she claimed no knowledge of that bedroom tryst; she did not intend to be held responsible for men's dreams.
Read quote -
It is a dangerous thing to have the same men in both the prophecy and the history business.
Read quote -
As Dio observed later, democracy sounded very well and good, —but its results are seen not to agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but is a most practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man than many of them.
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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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I wouldn't dare to speculate as to Cleopatra's falling in love. Her relationships are too convenient for that.
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No one sits on the stoop when she's a kid and thinks, 'I want to be a biographer when I grow up.'
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For a few thousand years, women had no history. Marriage was our calling, and meekness our virtue. Over the last century, in stuttering succession, we have gained a voice, a vote, a room, a playing field of our own. Decorously or defiantly, we now approach what surely qualifies as the final frontier.
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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.
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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?
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