...I managed to make it clear that what I most wanted was time to grow up. The war had not matured me; I was like a piece of meat that is burned on o… - Robertson Davies

If I had to describe my remarks this evening frankly — as if I were in police court and on oath, so to speak — I should have to call it a ramble over several subjects, portions of which may seem to you to be impudent, and portions of which will be ignorant, and portions of which may contrive to be both at once.

Need we go into details about what I said to Judy? I am no poet, and I suppose what I said was very much what everybody always says, and although I remember her as speaking golden words, I cannot recall precisely anything she said. If love is to be watched and listened to without embarrassment, it must be transmuted into art, and I don't know how to do that, and it is not what I have come to Zurich to learn.

But the character of the music emphasized the tale as allegory — humorous, poignant, humane allegory — disclosing the metamorphosis of life itself, in which man moves from confident inexperience through the bitterness of experience, toward the rueful wisdom of self-knowledge.