The image can only be studied through the image, by dreaming images as they gather in reverie. It is a non-sense to claim to study imagination objectively since one really receives the image only if he admires it. Already in comparing one image to another, one runs the risk of losing participation in its individuality.

True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.

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, this permanent, durable immobile world.

To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.

Words, in their distant past, have the past of my reveries.

The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed.

The cleverer I am at miniaturizing the world, the better I possess it.