“The door, indeed, stood open as before; but the windows were still shuttered, the chimneys breathed no stain into the bright air, there sounded abroad none of that low stir (perhaps audible rather to the ear of the spirit than to the ear of the flesh) by which a house announces and betrays its human lodgers.”

“I turned my ear toward the door because I heard him breathing. When you’re alone and afraid, the simple sound of the steady in and out of air being drawn by another person is good medicine.”

“The painting showed a hairless, oppressed creature with a head like an inverted pear, its hands clapped in horror to its ears, its mouth open in a vast, soundless scream. Twisted ripples of the creature's torment, echoes of its cry, flooded out into the air surrounding it; the man or woman, whichever it was, had become contained by its own howl. It had covered its ears against its own sound. The creature stood on a bridge and no one else was present; the creature screamed in isolation. Cut off by - or despite - its outcry.”

“Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.”

“Someone pounded on the office door. Barabas moved to the door, slid aside the metal shutter covering the narrow spy window, and looked through it.“It’s your lover man.”“Barabas, open the damn door,” Raphael snarled.Barabas slid the shutter closed. “Do you want me to let him in?”“I’m thinking about it.”Barabas slid the shutter open. “She’s thinking about it.”

“There is the darkness of a moonless night out of doors, and there is the darkness of a house with its shutters closed and the lamps quenched. There is the darkness of sleep, relieved by the bright images of dreams. But no darkness is as complete, as blanketing, as terrifying as the utter darkness of underground.”