Quoting Bachelard

"exaggeration is always at the summit of any living image" (p80)

"The imagination sharpens all of our senses. The imagining attention prepares our attention for instantaneousness." (p87)

"there will always be more things in a closed than in an open box ... it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience. To verify images kills them, and it is always more enriching to imagine than to experience." (p88)

"When we accept slight amazement, we prepare ourselves to imagine great amazement and, in the world of the imagination, it becomes normal for an elephant, which is an enormous animal, to come out of a snail shell. It would be exceptional, however, if we were to ask him to got back into it. ... Beauty and magnitude cause spores to swell. ... one of the powers and attraction of smallness lies in the fact that large things can issue from small ones." (p108)

Gaston Bachelard, The poetics of space (1958, tr.1964)