Quotes On Philosophy

From The Poetics of Space (1964):

…when we discover a nest it takes us back to our childhood or, rather, to a childhood; to the childhoods we should have had. For not many of us have been endowed by life with the full measure of its cosmic implications.

According to Michelet, a bird is a worker without tools. It has “neither the hand of the squirrel, nor the teeth of the beaver.” “In reality,” he writes, “a bird’s tool is its own body that is its breast, with which it presses and tightens its materials until they have become absolutely pliant, well-blended and adapted to the general plan.” And Michelet suggests a house built by and for the body, taking form from the inside, like a shell, in an intimacy that works physically. The form of the nest is commanded by the inside. “On the inside,” he continues, “the instrument that prescribes a circular form for the nest is nothing else but the body of the bird.” (p. 101)