Knowledge is a suite of rooms..."

"Knowledge is a suite of rooms. Dirty rooms, un-swept as museums in the provinces. And to enter each room you must leave with the women at the door some priceless thing, which feels part of yourself and your identity so that it feels like ripping skin.

And the keepers sit in piles of discarded treasures, like the pelts of love or children's pity, and at each successive door the piles are less because few stagger such long distances, until there comes a door at which there lies a small, white rag, stained as a dishcloth, which may be sanity.

And if you think that is the end you are mistaken, it is the beginning.
And people say, ‘I know myself.’
Have you heard that?
Never.
They know the contents of one room."

                                                

 -- Howard Barker, from The Bite of the Night