Excerpts from Mémoires d'Hadrien, Marguerite Yourcenar (part 1):

"Purposely, I never looked to sleep those whom I loved: they rested from me, I know; I also know that they escaped from me. Every man is ashamed of his sleep-altered face. How many times, when I got up too early to read or study, I put my kneaded cushions and crumpled sheets in order, almost obscene evidence of our encounters with nothing, evidence that every night we ceased to exist." (p. 28)

"It was in Latin that I administered the empire; my epitaph will be carved in Latin on the wall of my mausoleum on the banks of the Tiber, but in Greek I shall have lived and thought." (p. 42)

"This obsession of a frustrated life immobilized my thinking at a fixed point like an abscess. My eagerness for power is the same as for love, which prevents the lover from eating, sleeping, thinking and even loving while certain rites are not fulfilled. The most urgent tasks seemed futile from the moment I was barred from acting as master and taking over decisions as to the future. I needed the certainty of reign to regain the taste of being useful." (p. 82)

"As soon as I was on the way, a new mail came to officially announce the death of the emperor. His will, which designated me an heir, had just been sent to Rome by a trustworthy bearer. Everything that, ten years ago, had been feverishly dreamed up, combined, discussed, or silenced, was reduced to a two-line message drawn in Greek with a firm hand in a tiny woman's handwriting. Attianus, who was waiting for me at Selinunte's pier, was the first to greet me with the title of Emperor." (p. 85)

"On the same day the empress widow and her relatives embarked for Rome. I returned to Antioch accompanied along the road by the acclamations of the legions. An extraordinary calm seized me: ambition and fear seemed like a forgotten nightmare. Whatever happened, I had always been determined to defend my imperial possibilities to the end. The act of adoption simplified everything. My own life no longer bothered me: I could think again of the rest of humanity." (p. 87)