When you have an American mother from the Midwest and an Egyptian father, you travel back and forth and see such completely different stories in the news about the exact same events. It makes you think, 'How is anybody able to understand or even have a dialogue when the basis of information is just so completely different?'

I left my husband a year after 9/11. Not because he was an American and I an Egyptian, nothing to do with culture or religion, nothing to do with 9/11. We brought out the worst in each other. But before we separated, we visited N.Y.C. one more time together for a friend's engagement, and we went to pay our respects at the site of the attacks.

While the 2011 revolution did not remove the regime, it has shortened the seemingly endless patience that many Egyptians once had for military rule.

Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing. And Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.

We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children.

The most important thing for me is to have real friendship between Egyptians and Americans.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.

I shocked my parents with a lot of things, whether it was becoming an actor or when I was dating someone outside the Egyptian community or when I moved away from home before getting married.

The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years.

The things we do outlast our mortality. The things we do are like monuments that people build to honor heroes after they've died. They're like the pyramids that the Egyptians built to honor the pharaohs. Only instead of being made of stone, they're made out of the memories people have of you.

"[Dialogue between Solon and an Egyptian Priest]

Aten, a minor solar God ? a red disc from which long rays emanated and reached down to earth ? was converted into the supreme God, in fact the one and only God, by Akhenaten, the heretic pharaoh. Aten evolved into Jehovah, and Akhenaten's religion evolved into Jewish monotheism. Akhenaten, or someone very close to him, is the true Moses of the Bible, standing up for the One God against Egyptian polytheism, and leading a mass Exodus of his monotheistic followers away from pagan Egypt to a new Promised Land. Jehovah, therefore, is just a modification of a minor Egyptian sun God.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the purpose of life was to prepare for a meaningful death, after having reached one's potential during a lifetime. Once that is achieved, then one lived among the Gods as an immortal.

According to one Egyptian account, the formation of the world was the realization of a concept first developed within the mind of the Creator. Leibniz had a similar idea. He imagined God as a kind of super computer, calculating every possible world and scoring them all according to some divine scale or metric. Once the Creator had analyzed all possible worlds in his mind (all potentialities), he made actual the world that had scored highest and was thus the best of all possible worlds. If you think this world is bad, you should see the alternatives!

"Every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith?acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors.

If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.

I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.

We don't pray for the land. We pray for the humans all humans... starting with the president Mohammed Morsi and all officials and for God to give everyone wisdom and responsibility to manage the affairs of this country and its people in true Egyptian spirit.

Citizens the priority now is to recover trust between the Egyptian - amongst the Egyptians and to have trust and confidence in our economy and international reputation and the fact that the change that we have embarked on will carry on and there's no going back to the old days.

There is a positive and personal relationship between the Egyptian people and the Syrian people.

Once you get a spice in your home you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go.

We can't understand when we're pregnant or when our siblings are expecting how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood genes humor. It means we were actually here on Earth for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids only with children.

The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3 000 years.