By listening to certain words as a child listens to the sea in a seashell, a word dreamer hears the murmur of a world of dreams.

Every corner in a house, every angle in a room, every inch of secluded space in which we like to hide, or withdraw into ourselves, is a symbol of solitude for the imagination; that is to say, it is the germ of a room, or of a house.

When the image is new, the world is new.

Love is never finished expressing itself, and it expresses itself better the more poetically it is dreamed.

Here is Menard's own intimate forest: 'Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade...I live in great density...Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage...In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities.

To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful.