“Ne pas succomber aux caresses n'est, hélas, pas une solution, car ne pas y succomber occupe plus de notre temps qu'y succomber.”
Source: L'avalée des avalés
“How lovely she was in her raiments of silk and levantine purple; the fabric provocatively set off the sheen of her white shoulders, which glistened with the sweat of the world. I was on the verge of giving in to the dangerous enticements of her caresses when I realized that I recognized her from an earlier encounter, back at the dawn of time.”
Source: Selected Writings
“Caresses are a wind blowing from within. (Les caresses sont un vent - Qui souffle du dedans.)”
“Just a few nights ago the roaring fire prompted a conversation about Gaston Bachelard's Psychoanalysis of Fire,' I said to Foucault. 'Did you by any chance know Bachelard?'
'Yes, I did,' Foucault responded. 'He was my teacher and exerted a great influence upon me.'
'I can just visualize Bachelard musing before his hearth and devising the startling thesis that mankind tamed fire to stimulate his daydreaming, that man is fundamentally the dreaming animal.'
'Not really,' Foucault blurted out. 'Bachelard probably never saw a fireplace or ever listened to water streaming down a mountainside. With him it was all a dream. He lived very ascetically in a cramped two-room flat he shared with his sister.'
'I have read somewhere that he was a gourmet and would shop every day in the street markets to get the freshest produce for his dinner.'
'Well, he undoubtedly shopped in the outdoor markets,' Foucault responded impatiently, 'but his cuisine, like his regimen, was very plain. He led a simple life and existed in his dream.'
'Do you shop in the outdoor markets in Paris?' Jake asked Michel.
'No,' Foucault laughed, 'I just go to the supermarket down the street from where I live.”
Source: Foucault in California [A True Story—Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death]
“Un rêve qui ne change pas les dimensions du monde est-il vraiment un rêve ?”
Source: Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement
“D'autres amours viendront bien entendu se greffer sur les premières forces aimantes. Mais toutes ces amours ne pourront jamais détruire la priorité historique de notre premier sentiment. La chronologie du cœur est indestructible.”
Source: Water and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Matter
“Quand la cloche des fleurs résonne au sommet des ombelles, toute la terre se tait, tout le ciel parle.”
Source: Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement
“He was used to millions screaming his name, but only one voice saved his soul.”
Source: Unexpected Connection
“La poésie n'est pas une tradition, c'est un rêve primitif, c'est l'éveil des images premières.”
Source: Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement
“Le mot inducteur [est] l'image première productrice d'images secondaires. Si l'on suit cette image comme système d'analyse, l'analyse s'ordonne d'elle-même. Au contraire, faute d'attention à cette image inductrice, des pages entières paraissent obscures, pauvres, froides. Elles sont inertes. On n'a pas épousé leur courant de vie.”
Source: Air and Dreams: An Essay on the Imagination of Movement