Mervyn Peake

Mount and begone. The world awaits you.

— Mervyn Peake

Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia.

— Mervyn Peake

I am the wilderness lost in man.

— Mervyn Peake

To live at all is miracle enough.

— Mervyn Peake

“Civilized people don't feel .”

— Mervyn Peake

Oh how I hate people!

— Mervyn Peake

Noon, ripe as thunder and silent as thought, had fled unfingered.

— Mervyn Peake

“It was obvious that their sorrows were conjoined.”

— Mervyn Peake

Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.

— Mervyn Peake

The Earth swirls down through the ominous moons of preconsidered generations.

— Mervyn Peake

“Anything, seen without prejudice, is enormous.”

— Mervyn Peake

I am too rich already, for my eyes Mint gold, while my heart cries.

— Mervyn Peake

I want a lot to eat, I'm going to think today.

— Mervyn Peake

Something to remember, that: cats for missiles.

— Mervyn Peake

Cold love’s the loveliest love of all. So clear, so crisp, so empty. In short, so civilized.

— Mervyn Peake

“But Fuchsia might as well have been carved from dark marble. Only her tears moved.”

— Mervyn Peake

“From daybreak to sunset she turned her thoughts, like boulders, over. She set them in long lines. She rearranged their order...”

— Mervyn Peake

I was brooding, boy. Than which there is no richer pastime. It muffles one with rotting plumes. It gives forth sullen music.…

— Mervyn Peake

“I want a big breakfast," said Fuchsia at last. "I want a lot to eat, I'm going to think today.”

— Mervyn Peake

And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself will cry for insurrection! For tomorrow is also a day -…

— Mervyn Peake

“But haven't all ambitious people something of the monstrous about them? You, sir, for instance, if you will forgive me, are a…

— Mervyn Peake

It was not certain what significance the ceremony held... but the formality was no less sacred for it being unintelligible

— Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly…

— Mervyn Peake

This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously…

— Mervyn Peake

In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time…

— Mervyn Peake

“The vastest things are those we may not learn. We are not taught to die, nor to be born, Nor how to…

— Mervyn Peake

“If ever he had harboured a conscience in his tough narrow breast he had by now dug out and flung away the…

— Mervyn Peake

“Drear ritual turned its wheel. The ferment of the heart, within these walls, was mocked by every length of sleeping shadow. The…

— Mervyn Peake

“She tossed her long hair and it flapped down her back like a pirate's flag. She stood in about as awkward a…

— Mervyn Peake

What is Time... That you speak of it so subserviently? Are we to be the slaves of the sun, that second-hand, overrated…

— Mervyn Peake

“But there were also times when she cried out in the darkness biting her lips - cried out against the substance of…

— Mervyn Peake

“Of Swelter's acreage, only a perch or two here and there might, if broken, prove vulnerable loam. That he bled profusely could…

— Mervyn Peake

Countless candles dribbled with hot wax, and their flames, like little flags, fluttered in the unchartered currents of air. Thousands of lamps,…

— Mervyn Peake

“To say that the frozen silence contracted itself into a yet higher globe of ice were to under-rate the exquisite tension and…

— Mervyn Peake

“...another comber of far pleasure followed the first, for his books came suddenly before his eyes, row upon row of volumes, row…

— Mervyn Peake

“I shall live alone. Always alone. In a house or a tree.' Fuchsia started to chew at a fresh grass blade. 'Someone…

— Mervyn Peake

“How's the blood-stream, my dear, invaluable little woman? How's the blood-stream?"... "It's quite comfortable, sir...I think, sir, thank you."... "Aha!"..."a comfortable stream,…

— Mervyn Peake

“Swelter's eyes meet those of his enemy, and never has there held between four globes of gristle so sinister a hell of…

— Mervyn Peake

“I do not understand your love,' he said.”

— Mervyn Peake

“It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others.”

— Mervyn Peake