Sometimes, it is not the kings and queen who make for the most fascinating history but the shadowy souls who happen to be in the right place at the right time.

There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate. —MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE

I held Nefertiti's body closer to mine, trying to press her spirit into me, to bring it back. But the reign of Nefertiti was finished. She was gone from Egypt.

there is nothing to fear but fear itself yet even then fear shouldn't be feared because fear cannot take what is protected by change

the one for whom the sun shines.. -Ramses II

You can't change the desert. You can only take the fastest course through it. Wishing it's an oasis won't make it so.

After all, that's why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people's lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours.

I'd always thought I would feel like an animal released from its cage when my student days were finished, I felt more like a bird that had been pushed from its nest and told it must fly.

Nothing is forever...nothing lasts.

But we are all sorry when loss comes for us. The test of our character comes not in how many tears we shed but in how we act after those tears have dried.

I don't think unhappiness is fated.

The profoundest of all sensualitiesis the sense of truthand the next deepest sensual experienceis the sense of justice.

Don’t allow people to come in and out of your life when it only benefits them.

I was blessed with a birth and a death, and I guess I just want some say in between.

There's so much rage in the world now and I'm finding poems to be the place where I want to stay. I rage and rage and then write a poem and return to breathing.

That was the worst of being poor, you couldn't give the right things in sickness.

Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends.

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food

I never knew a man troubled with melancholy, who had plenty to do, and did it.

There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.

Having traveled a lot and met people from different horizons it makes you more humble and ready to listen.