A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
Baudelaire writes: In certain almost supernatural inner states, the depth of life is entirely revealed in the spectacle, however ordinary, that we have before our eyes, and which becomes the symbol of...
There is no original truth, only original error.
Of course, thanks to the house, a great many of our memories are housed, and if the house is a bit elaborate, if it has a cellar and a garret, nooks and corridors, our memories have refuges that are a...
Childhood is a human water, a water which comes out of the shadows. This childhood in the mists and glimmers, this life in the slowness of limbo gives us a certain layer of births. What a lot of being...
A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event
Contemplating a flame perpetuates a primordial reverie. It separates us from the world and enlarges our world as dreamers. In itself the flame is a major presence, but being close to it makes us dream...
The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for pha...
The characteristic of scientific progress is our knowing that we did not know.
Words are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common-sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in "foreign commerce" on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who a...
Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.
If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.
Poetry is one of the destinies of speech... One would say that the poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.
So like a forgotten fire a childhood can always flare up again within us.
The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.
If I were a psychiatrist, I should advise my patients who suffer from anguish to read this poem of Baudelaire's whenever an attack seems imminent. Very gently, they should pronounce Baudelaire's key w...