"We like the dark. Dark for dark business!"

       

 As a product of pop culture, there are a lot of catch phrases from movies, songs, and books stuck in my head, absorbed at some point over the years and relegated to the back recesses of my mind, ready to re-emerge when the moment calls for it. Like when you feel the need to announce that you have to use the facilities ("Gotta go see a man about a wallaby"), or commenting on a buddy's outdated sense of fashion ("Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?"), or when you are told to shelter-in-place by the governor for the foreseeable future, with work and school unfolding together at home for the entire family ("Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.")

Or when the lights are turned low and someone claims that it's too dark: "We like the dark. Dark for dark business!"

The backstory and build-up to this line, as delivered in Chapter 1 of The Hobbit, might just be my favorite bit o' fantasy writing:


          "...the music began all at once, so sudden and sweet that Bilbo forgot everything else, and was swept away into dark lands under strange moons, far over The Water and very far from his hobbit-hole under The Hill.
          The dark came into the room from the little window that opened in the side of The Hill; the fire flickered - it was April - and still they played on, while the shadow of Gandalf's beard wagged against the wall.
          The dark filled all the room, and the fire died down, and the shadows were lost, and still they played on. And suddenly first one and then another began to sing as they played, deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes...

Far over the mountains cold

To dungeons deep and caverns old

We must away ere break of day

To seek the pale enchanted gold...

          As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside of him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up - probably somebody lighting a wood-fire - and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again.
          He got up trembling. He had less than half a mind to fetch the lamp, and more than half a mind to pretend to, and go and hide behind the beer-barrels in the cellar, and not come out again until all the dwarves had gone away. Suddenly he found that the music and the singing had stopped, and they were all looking at him with eyes shining in the dark.
          "Where are you going?" said Thorin, in a tone that seemed to show that he had guessed both halves of the hobbit's mind.
          "What about a little light?" said Bilbo apologetically.
          "We like the dark," said all the dwarves. "Dark for dark business!"

Whatever one might say about the Peter Jackson version of the story, I think he nailed this scene: