"...When a poet tells us of the secret of milk, he is not lying, not to himself or to others. On the contrary, he is finding an extraordinary totality. As Jean-Paul Sartre says, 'we must invent the heart of things if we wish one day to discover it. Audiberti informs us about milk in speaking of its secret blackness. But for Jules Renard, milk is hopelessly white, since it is only what it seems to be.'"

Gaston Bachelard,
On Poetic Imagination and Reverie, quoting from "L'homme ligote" by J.P. Sartre. Jacques Audiberti (1899-1965), is a French poet & playwright and Jules Renard (1864-1910) a French novelist in the realist tradition.