Quotation from: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Written by: James Joyce

--The soul is born, he said vaguely, first in those moments I told you
of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the
body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets
flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality,
language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

Davin knocked the ashes from his pipe.