Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the spark… - Robertson Davies

Celtic civilization was tribal, but by no means savage or uncultivated. People who regarded the theft of a harp from a bard as a crime second only to an attack on the tribal chieftain cannot be regarded as wanting in cultivated feeling.

"You played it with great seriousness. And it is not such an uncommon game. Do you know Ibsen's poem — <blockquote>
To live it to do battle with trolls
in the vaults of the heart and brain.
To write: that is to sit
in judgement over one's self."
</blockquote>

At school I was a nuisance, for my father was now Chairman of our Continuation School Board, and I affected airs of near-equality with the teacher that must have galled her; I wanted to argue about everything, expand everything, and generally turn every class into a Socratic powwwow instead of getting on with the curriculum. Probably I made her nervous, as a pupil full of green, fermenting information is so well able to do. I have dealt with many innumerable variations of my younger self in classrooms since then, and have mentally apologized for my tiresomeness.