Who would be so besotted as to die without having made at least the round of this, his prison? - Marguerite Yourcenar

We lose track of everything, and of everyone, even ourselves. The facts of my father's life are less known to me than those of the life of Hadrian. My own existence, if I had to write of it, would be reconstructed by me from externals, laboriously, as if it were the life of someone else: I should have to turn to letters, and to the recollections of others, in order to clarify such uncertain memories. What is ever left but crumbled walls, or masses of shade?

I did not love less; indeed I loved more. But the weight of love, like that of an arm thrown tenderly across a chest, becomes little by little too heavy to bear.

une once d'inertie pèse plus qu'un boisseau de sagesse
(La conversation à Innsbruck)