“I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.”

Introduction, sect. 6
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie) (1960)

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Gaston Bachelard 35
French writer and philosopher 1884–1962

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