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.

Of course, any simplification runs the risk of mutilating reality; but it helps us establish perspectives.

Irony gives us, at little expense, the impression that we are experienced psychologists.

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears its truth.

The blank page gives us the right to dream.

The psychology of the alchemist is that of reveries trying to constitute themselves in experiments on the exterior world. A double vocabulary must be established between reverie and experiment. The exaltation of the names of substances is the preamble to experiments on the "exalted" substances.

For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.