I don't think I ever relinquish a person I have known, and surely not my fictional characters. I see them, I hear them, with a clarity that I would call hallucinatory if hallucination didn't mean something else ... A character whom we create can never die, any more than a friend can die ... Through [my characters] I've lived many parallel lives.
Marguerite YourcenarI think still that someone wiser than I might well have remained happy till his death.
Marguerite YourcenarIf you love life you also love the past, because it is the present as it has survived in memory." Translation by David Downie
Marguerite YourcenarA touch of madness is, I think, almost always necessary for constructing a destiny.
Marguerite YourcenarOne nourishes one's created characters with one's own substance: it's rather like the process of gestation. To give the character life, or to give him back life, it is of course necessary to fortify him by contributing something of one's own humanity, but it doesn't follow from that that the character is I, the writer, or that I am the character. The two entities remain distinct.
Marguerite Yourcenar