I knew that good like bad becomes a routine, that the temporary tends to endure, that what is external permeates to the inside, and that the mask, gi… - Marguerite Yourcenar

The mask, given time, comes to be the face itself

It is not difficult to nourish admirable thoughts when the stars are present.

Nailed to the beloved body like a slave to a cross, I have learned some secrets of life which are now dimmed in my memory by the operation of the same law which ordains that the convalescent, once cured, ceases to understand the mysterious truths laid bare by illness, and that the prisoner, set free, forgets his torture, or the conqueror, his triumph passed, forgets his glory.

I have no children, nor is that a regret. To be sure, in time of weakness and fatigue, when one lacks the courage of one’s convictions, I have sometimes reproached myself for not having taken the precaution to engender a son, to follow me. But such a vain regret rests upon two hypotheses, equally doubtful: first, that a son necessarily continues us, and second, that the strange mixture of good and evil, that mass of minute and odd particularities which make up a person, deserves continuation.