All knowledge is in response to a question. If there were no question, there would be no scientific knowledge. Nothing proceeds from itself.

So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.

Instead of looking for the dream in reverie, people should look for reverie in the dream. There are calm beaches in the midst of nightmares.

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 go upstairs in the word house is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream.

Happy is the man who knows or even the man who remembers those silent vigils where silence itself was the sign of the communion of souls!

Actually, however, life begins less by reaching upward, than by turning upon itself. But what a marvelously insidious, subtle image of life a coiling vital principle would be! And how many dreams the leftward oriented shell, or one that did not conform to the rotation of its species, would inspire!