Wow! I've been looking for an english translation of Recoltes et Semailles for a while. I see now it's easily reachable by google (oops), but still, thanks!
re: Only innocence can surmount them ... when we find ourselves able to listen to things, totally and intensely absorbed in child play. — Grothendieck
Apropos is something another Frenchman once said:
"Talent is long patience, and originality an effort of will and of intense observation." — Flaubert
"Yet it is not these gifts, nor the most determined ambition combined with irresistible will-power, that enables one to surmount the "invisible yet formidable boundaries" that encircle our universe. Only innocence can surmount them, which mere knowledge doesn't even take into account, in those moments when we find ourselves able to listen to things, totally and intensely absorbed in child play."
http://www.fermentmagazine.org/rands/promenade11.html