https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Cheval#Palais_idéal


"I was walking very fast when my foot caught on something that sent me stumbling a few metres away, I wanted to know the cause. [Previously, in] a dream, I had built a palace, a castle or caves, I cannot express it well [...] I told no one about it for fear of being ridiculed and I felt ridiculous myself.
"Then fifteen years later, when I had almost forgotten my dream, when I wasn't thinking of it at all, my foot reminded me of it. My foot tripped on a stone that almost made me fall. I wanted to know what it was [...] It was a stone of such a strange shape that I put it in my pocket to admire it at my leisure.
"The next day, I went back to the same place. I found more stones, even more beautiful, I gathered them together on the spot and was overcome with delight [...] It's a sandstone shaped by water and hardened by the power of time. It becomes as hard as pebbles. It represents a sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate, it represents any kind of animal, any kind of caricature.
"I said to myself: since Nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture."

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