“Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death – a state which I feared yet did not understand.”
– Mary Shelley
Frankenstein, Chapter 13. The creature is trying to understand the nature of knowledge, which he describes as strange.