“It is symptomatic of the constricting specialism and the oppressive burden of fact of our time that it has been left to the imagination of a novelist, Marguerite Yourcenar, to create the broadest, the most balanced and in many ways the most authentic interpretation of the affair.”

“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.”

“We may seem the weakest and most insignificant of all the Realms, but our strength comes in other ways. We have what no other race has: imagination. Any one of us, even the lowliest, can create worlds within ourselves; we can people them with the most extraordinary creatures, the most amazing inventions, the most incredible things. We can live in those worlds ourselves, if we choose; and in our own worlds, we can be as we want to be. Imagination is as close as we will ever be to godhead, Poison, for in imagination, we can create wonders.”

“Life ... is a burden. The day about to begin is an oppressive weight.... The erect penis is heavy, even heavier the hanging one. Even the most tender breast has to be dragged along.”

“For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.”

“The object of their desire, the “essential” core of life, is something called authenticity, and finding the authentic has become the foremost spiritual quest of our time. It is a quest fraught with difficulty, as it takes place at the intersection of some of our culture’s most controversial issues, including environmentalism and the market economy, personal identity and the consumer culture, and artistic expression and the meaning of life.”