Daydreaming is as similar to thought as a nebula is to a star; it borders on sleep and is therefore important as a border region. An atmosphere, populated by living transparent beings: that is the beginning of the unknown. But beyond that opens up the vast expanse of the Possible. There are other beings, other facts. Not supernatural, but an occult continuation of infinite nature... Sleep forms the contact with the Possible, which we also call the improbable. The world of the night is its own world. The night, as night, is a universe... the dark things of the unknown world become the neighbors of man, either through real communication or through a visionary enlargement of the distances in the abyss... and the sleeper who does not see everything fully, but is also not entirely unconscious, catches a glimpse of the strange animal world, of peculiar plants, the frightening or radiant pale forms, of the spirits, the masks, figures, hydras, tangled clusters, of the moonlight without a moon, of a dark destruction of wonders, of growth and disappearance in a misty depth, of forms wandering in the shadows, of the entire mystery we call dreams and which is nothing other than the approach of an invisible reality. The dream is the aquarium of the night.
V. Hugo: Travailleurs de la Mer