Gaston Bachelard

"Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books."

"A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language."

"One must always maintain one’s connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a con…"

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

"Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child’s world and thus a world event."

"To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water."

"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."

"Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need."