Kitty > Kitty's Quotes

“I pull on his fingers softly, tired of this talk. “I have something to tell you…”

He tightens his grip on my fingers in excitement as I whisper that I’m carrying his child.

Tutankhamun gives a cry of proud joy. He lifts me in his arms and spins me until I shriek and demand that he stops.

“Think of the baby!” I admonish, laughing. “The baby,” he repeats, trying the words out on his lips. “Our baby.”

“If the gods will it,” I say soberly, resting my face against his.

“They will,” he breathes, “I swear it.”
― Stephanie Liaci

“The Ptolemies were in fact Macedonian Greek, which makes Cleopatra approximately as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor. The word ‘honey skinned’ recurs in descriptions of her relatives and would presumably applied to hers as well, despite the inexactitudes surrounding her mother and paternal grandmother. There was certainly Persian blood in the family, but even an Egyptian mistress is a rarity among the Ptolemies. She was not dark skinned.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life

“I loved him so, even his past was precious to me. I found myself kissing each mark, thinking, I would have had it never happen, I would wish it away, taking him further and further back to a time when he had known no disappointments, no battles, no wounds, as I erased each one. To make him again like Caesarion. Yet if we take the past away from those we love - even to protect them - do we not steal their very selves?”
― Margaret George, The Memoirs of Cleopatra

“I wish I wasn't an imperial highness or an ex-grand duchess. I'm sick of people doing things to me because of what I am. Girl-in-white-dress. Short-one-with-fringe. Daughter-of-the-tsar. Child-of-the-ex-tyrant. I want people to look and see me, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, not the caboose on a train of grand duchesses. Someday, I promise myself, no one will be able to hear my name or look at my picture and suppose they know all about me. Someday I will do something bigger than what I am.”
― Sarah Miller, The Lost Crown

“...as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold - everywhere the glint of gold. For the moment - an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by - I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, wonderful things.”
― Howard Carter, The Tomb of Tutankhamen

“The vanity extended most of all to his library, arguably the real love of Cicero's life. It is difficult to name anything in which he took more pleasure, aside possibly evasion of the sumptuary laws. Cicero liked to believe himself wealthy. He prided himself on his books. He needed no further reason to dislike Cleopatra: intelligent women who had better libraries than he did offended him on three counts.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life

“[Cleopatra's] power has been made to derive from her sexuality, for obvious reason; as one of Caesar's murderers had noted, 'How much more attention people pay to their fears than to their memories!' It has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather than to her brains, to reduce her to the sum of her sex life.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life

“A capable, clear-eyed sovereign, she knew how to build a fleet, suppress an insurrection, control a currency, alleviate a famine. An eminent Roman general vouched for her grasp of military affairs. Even at a time when women rulers were no rarity she stood out, the sole female of the ancient world to rule alone and to play a role in Western affairs. She was incomparably richer than anyone else in the Mediterranean. And she enjoyed greater prestige than any other woman of her age..... Cleopatra descended from a long line of murderers and faithfully upheld the family tradition but was, for her time and place, remarkably well behaved. She nonetheless survives as a wanton temptress, not the last time a genuinely powerful woman has been transmuted into a shamelessly seductive one.”
― Stacy Schiff

“Cleopatra moreover came of age in a country that entertained a singular definition of women’s roles. Well before her and centuries before the arrival of the Ptolemies, Egyptian women enjoyed the right to make their own marriages. Over time their liberties had increased, to levels unprecedented in the ancient world. They inherited equally and held property independently. Married women did not submit to their husbands’ control. They enjoyed the right to divorce and to be supported after a divorce. Until the time an ex-wife’s dowry was returned, she was entitled to be lodged in the house of her choice. Her property remained hers; it was not to be squandered by a wastrel husband. The law sided with the wife and children if a husband acted against their interests. Romans marveled that in Egypt female children were not left to die; a Roman was obligated to raise only his first-born daughter. Egyptian women married later than did their neighbors as well, only about half of them by Cleopatra’s age. They loaned money and operated barges. They served as priests in the native temples. They initiated lawsuits and hired flute players. As wives, widows, or divorcées, they owned vineyards, wineries, papyrus marshes, ships, perfume businesses, milling equipment, slaves, homes, camels. As much as one third of Ptolemaic Egypt may have been in female hands.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra

“To the punishing study of Egyptian, however, Cleopatra applied herself. She was allegedly the first and only Ptolemy to bother to learn the language of the 7 million people over whom she ruled.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra

“The personal inevitably trumps the political, and the erotic trumps all: We will remember that Cleopatra slept with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony long after we have forgotten what she accomplished in doing so, that she sustained a vast, rich, densely populated empire in its troubled twilight in the name of a proud and cultivated dynasty. She remains on the map for having seduced two of the greatest men of her time, while her crime was to have entered into those same "wily and suspicious" marital partnerships that every man in power enjoyed. She did so in reverse and in her own name; this made her a deviant, socially disruptive, an unnatural woman. To these she added a few other offenses. She made Rome feel uncouth, insecure, and poor, sufficient cause for anxiety without adding sexuality into the mix.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra: A Life

“Princess," he said, spreading his arms in a shrug, "how does such a little thing like you get such a big temper?"

I held up my hand to shield my eyes from the sun.

"Marc Antony," I said, "how does such a big man like you have such a little brain?”
― Kristiana Gregory, Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile - 57 B.C.

“It's strange, isn't it? The greatest gift you could have given her stemmed from your disgrace. It's enough to make me start going to church.”
― Jane Steen, The House of Closed Doors

“The Ptolemies were in fact Macedonian Greek, which makes Cleopatra approximately as Egyptian as Elizabeth Taylor.”
― Stacy Schiff, Cleopatra

“Cimorene tilted her head to one side, considering. "I think I'm glad you didn't win."

"Oh? Why is that?" Kazul sounded amused.

"Because you wouldn't have had any use for a princess if you were the Queen of the Dragons, and if you hadn't decided to take me on, that yellow-green dragon Moranz would probably have eaten me," Cimorene explained.

"You mean, if I were the King of the Dragons," Kazul corrected her. "Queen of the Dragons is a dull job."

"But you're a female!" Cimorene said. "If you'd carried Colin's Stone from the Ford of Whispering Snakes to the Vanishing Mountain, you'd have had to be a queen, wouldn't you?"

"No, of course not," Kazul said. "Queen of the Dragons is a totally different job from King, and it's not one I'm particularly interested in. Most people aren't. I think the position's been vacant since Oraun tore his wing and had to retire."

"But King Tokoz is a male dragon!" Cimorene said, then frowned. "Isn't he?"

"Yes, yes, but that has nothing to do with it," Kazul said a little testily.

"'King' is the name of the job. It doesn't matter who holds it."

Cimorene stopped and thought for a moment. "You mean that dragons don't care whether their king is male or female; the title is the same no matter who the ruler is."

"That's right. We like to keep things simple."

"Oh.”
― Patricia C. Wrede, Dealing with Dragons

“And what do you expect us to do about it?" one of the voices asked curiously.

"I don't know," Cimorene said. "Except, of course, that I would rather not be eaten. I can't see who you are in this dark, you know."

"That can be fixed," said the voice. A moment later, a small ball of light appeared in the air above Cimorene's head. Cimorene stepped backward very quickly and ran into the wall.

The voices belonged to dragons.

Five of them lay on or sprawled over or curled around the various rocks and columns that filled the huge cave where Cimorene stood. Each of the males (there were three) had two short, stubby, sharp-looking horns on either side of their heads; the female dragon had three, one on each side and one in the center of her forehead. The last dragon was apparently still too young to have made up its mind which sex it wanted to be; it didn't have any horns at all.”
― Patricia C. Wrede, Dealing with Dragons

“It’s plain as day Jack adores you. I think he adores you to the point that the thought of being without you terrifies him to the core. And for a man like Jack Astor, that is significant.”
― Shana Abe, The Second Mrs. Astor