“The uncertainty, the fear of the unknown was driving him, almost to the point of desperation. He felt as if he was going down a dark stairway, missing a step, hurtling into the unknown and having no idea where he would land.”

“Lovecraft said that the oldest and strongest type of fear is the fear of the unknown. And he was an authority on such matters.But that's not exactly it, is it?We like the unknown. We're hunky dory with the unknown. We are, in fact, perfectly thrilled with the unknown -- as long as it remains unknown and we never have to think about it. What we're really afraid of is that the unknown will stand up and demand to be recognized. That it won't get out of the way quickly enough and we'll step in it, all squishy and moist. We're terrified at night in the dark that the rough, slouching unknown will crawl into bed and give us a hot wet kiss on the neck. We're not afraid of the unknown. We're afraid of the unknown becoming known.”

“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”

“He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points.”

“He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.”

“He belonged to a walled city of the fifteenth century, a city of narrow, cobbled streets, and thin spires, where the inhabitants wore pointed shoes and worsted hose. His face was arresting, sensitive, medieval in some strange inexplicable way, and I was reminded of a portrait seen in a gallery I had forgotten where, of a certain Gentleman Unknown. Could one but rob him of his English tweeds, and put him in black, with lace at his throat and wrists, he would stare down at us in our new world from a long distant past—a past where men walked cloaked at night, and stood in the shadow of old doorways, a past of narrow stairways and dim dungeons, a past of whispers in the dark, of shimmering rapier blades, of silent, exquisite courtesy.”