Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life.... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, … - Gaston Bachelard

Every object in the world, loved for its own sake, has a right to its own nothingness. Every being pours out being, a little of its being, the shadow of its being, into its own non-being.

Well-determined centers of revery are means of communication between men who dream as surely as well-defined concepts are means of communications between men who think.

But shall I have the strength to write this book? For there is a great distance between the words we speak uninhibitedly to a friendly audience and the discipline needed to write a book. When we are lecturing, we become animated by the joy of teaching and, at times, our words think for us. But to write a book requires really serious reflection.