How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I have heard things, I admit it. And sometimes people talk over your head, not noticing you're there, or not thinking you understand. But at other times"—I paused—"it's as if something spoke to me, as if I saw things […] And sometimes the stars tell me […] and there is music, and voices in the dark. Like dreams." (I.3.28)
Young Merlin gives Ambrosius some juicy info about the workings of the southern Welsh court. Like a good military leader, Ambrosius wants to know Merlin's sources. Merlin's caught in a tight place. He doesn't know Ambrosius that well, but he does know that his life hangs in the balance. Can he tell him that he just "knows" things? Or would Ambrosius frown on things like second sight? Turns out all sources of knowledge are good to Ambrosius—so Merlin's safe.
Quote #2
It is common knowledge that, with children, those things which are most important often go unmentioned. It is as if the child recognizes, by instinct, things which are too big for him, and keeps them in his mind, feeding them with his imagination till they assume proportions distended or grotesque which can become equally the stuff of magic or of nightmare. (I.7.1)
Merlin recalls his first experience with the crystal cave and thinks about the role of imagination in the process of memory. This gets at a major concern in this work: knowledge and how we know things. For Merlin, knowledge is often about old-school studying. But sometimes, it's about divine inspiration and imagination. And because his memory is on the decline, he wonders if his "factual" memory of the crystal cave is really very accurate.
Quote #3
Belasius was pleased with me; we were doing mathematics, and it had been one of the days when I could forget nothing, but walked through the problems he set me as if the field of knowledge were an open meadow with a pathway leading plain across it for all to see. (II.6.34)
Stewart socks us with a lovely simile-and-metaphor combo here: Merlin is waltzing across the field of knowledge that day because his brain is so awesome that he comprehends EVERYTHING Belasius wants to teach him. There's a special kind of freedom that Merlin feels when it comes to the life of the mind. It was his earliest way of breaking free from the situation at home, and now, his intellect buys him free time to explore the power that's in the land around him.