Arthur Machen

“ But we were all in the mood of adventure; we would go to Usk—a little town in our country, far in the west—and go to it by a new way. Now, one ascertains the surest 'bus route, or the quickest tubes, and sticks to the way when found; I should hate anyone who proposed to me the theory that it would be fun to get into the City from St. John's Wood by way of Clerkenwell or Pentonville; but we have come to the age of iron. So, then, Bill and Jack and I set out for Usk, and would find a new way of getting to that noble city of two thousand souls or thereabouts. ”

“ These are the words which, once read, throw their light and radiance back over all the book; as the furnace fires blazing up suddenly at night in my own country in the west, shine far away among woods, and in dark valleys, and discover his path to the wanderer in a wild, dim world. ”

“ Doubtless there is a secret, an illuminating secret, hidden beneath all the surfaces of things; and perhaps the old alchemists were thinking of that secret when they spoke of the Powder of Projection, the Philosopher's Stone, that turned all it touched into gold.
There are many ways of the great quest of the secret. Some of them fill me with an immeasureable weariness. Not very long ago, there was a picture in a daily paper with an odd history attached to it. The picture was a head of the Christ. ”