R. Scott Bakker, The Judging Eye

"Darkness shields as much as it threatens."

"I remeber asking a wise man, once . . . 'Why do Men fear the dark' . . . 'Because darkness' he told me, 'is ignorance made visable.' 'And do Men despise ignorance' I asked. 'No,' he said, 'they prize it above all things--all things!--but only so long as it remains invisible."

"So he came to realize that learning a language was perhaps the most profound thing a man could do. Not only did it require wrapping different sounds around the very movement of your soul, it involved learning things somehow already known, as though much of what he was somehow existed apart from him. A kind of enlightenment accompanied these first lessons, a deeper understanding of self."