One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it.
Gaston BachelardOur whole childhood remains to be reimagined. In reimagining it, we have the possibility of recovering it in the very life of our reveries as a solitary child.
Gaston BachelardTo go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream.
Gaston BachelardIt is a poor reverie which invites a nap. One must even wonder whether, in this "failing asleep", the subconscious itself does not undergo a decline in being.
Gaston BachelardWhoever lives for poetry must read everything. How often has the light of a new idea sprung for me from a simple brochure! When one allows himself to be animated by new images, he discovers iridescence in the images of old books. Poetic ages unite in a living memory. The new age awakens the old. The old age comes to live again in the new. Poetry is never as unified as when it diversifies.
Gaston Bachelard