Quote

I could say that all my books were conceived by the time I was twenty, although they were not to be written for another thirty or forty years. But perhaps this is true of most writers—the emotional storage is done very early on.

Marguerite Yourcenar

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Marguerite Yourcenar
Age: 84 †
Born: 1903
Born: June 7
Died: 1987
Died: December 17
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Brussels
Belgium
Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour
Yourcenar
Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour
Marguerite de Crayencour
Another
Twenties
True
Although
Book
Writers
Done
Early
Storage
Years
Emotional
Conceived
Time
Perhaps
Forty
Books
Thirty
Written
Twenty

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The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions.
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A being afire with life cannot foresee death in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
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I am not sure that the discovery of love is necessarily more exquisite than the discovery of poetry.
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This city belongs to ghosts, to murderers, to sleepwalkers. Where are you, in what bed, in what dream?
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The landscape of my days appears to be composed, like mountainous regions, of varied materials heaped up pell-mell. There I see my nature, itself composite, made up of equal parts of instinct and training. Here and there protrude the granite peaks of the inevitable, but all about is rubble from the landslips of chance.
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the press is too often a distorting mirror, which deforms the people and events it represents, making them seem bigger or smaller than they really are.
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Do not mistake me. I am not yet weak enough to yield to fearful imaginings, which are almost as absurd as illusions of hope, and are certainly harder to bear. If I must deceive myself, I should prefer to stay on the side of confidence, for I shall lose no more there and shall suffer less.
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Any truth creates a scandal.
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Everything that we do affects our fate for better or for worse. The circumstances into which we are born also exert a tremendous influence we come into the world with debits and credits for which we are not responsible already posted to our account: this teaches us humility.
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Want of passion is, I think, a very striking characteristic of Americans, not unrelated to their predilection for violence. For very few people truly have a passionate desire to achieve, and violence serves as a kind of substitute.
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A touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
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Cruelty is the luxury of those who have nothing to do, like drugs or racing stables.
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Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.
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Ancient and oriental civilizations were more sensitive than we are to the cycles of things to the succession of generations, both divine and human and to change within stasis. Western man is virtually alone in wanting to make his God into a fortress and personal immortality into a bulwark against time.
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Translating is writing.
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Leaving behind books is even more beautiful — there are far too many children.
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Laws change more slowly than custom, and though dangerous when they fall behind the times are more dangerous still when they presume to anticipate custom.
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Books are not life, only its ashes.
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Morals are a matter of private agreement decency is of public concern.
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Passion such as hers is all consent, asking little in return. I had merely to enter a room where she was to see her face take on that peaceful expression of one who is resting in bed. If I touched her, I had the impression that all the blood in her veins was turning to honey.
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