People often believed they were safer in the light, thinking monsters only came out at night. But safety – like light – is a façade.

For what is it to be blind, but to find safety in the darkness and to become the spouse of habit whose name is ignorance?

And Harry remembered his first nightmarish trip into the forest, the first time he had ever encountered the thing that was then Voldemort, and how he had faced him, and how he and Dumbledore had discussed fighting a losing battle not long thereafter. It was important, Dumbledore said, to fight, and fight again, and keep fighting, for only then could evil be kept at bay, though never quite eradicated. . . .

And Harry saw very clearly as he sat there under the hot sun how people who cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him; but now that was over. He could not let anybody else stand between him and Voldemort; he must abandon forever the illusion he ought to have lost at the age of one, that the
shelter of a parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from his nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really, that it was all in his imagination; the last and greatest of his protectors had died, and he was more alone than he had ever been before.

Police officers and firemen have safety training and protective equipment. The most a taxi driver might have is a Plexiglas window.

What would be the significance of the candlelight, if there were no darkness? What would be the power of the stars over our minds, if there were no night?

It's the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age