“The vastest things are those we may not learn. We are not taught to die, nor to be born, Nor how to burn With love. How pitiful is our enforced return To those small things we are the masters of.” — Mervyn Peake Copy Share Image
Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
Through her, in microcosm, the wide earth sobbed. The starglobe sank in her; the colours faded. The death-dew rose and the wild birds in… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
“Behind him she saw something which by contrast with the alien incalculable figure before her, was close and real. It was something which she… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
“If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white walls - The Consumptive.… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
“He knew that he was caught up in one of those stretches of time when for anything to happen normally would be abnormal. The… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
“Would you be so kind as to remove your redundant carcass from the door of this room, my man,’ he said, in his high,… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
What is Time... That you speak of it so subserviently? Are we to be the slaves of the sun, that second-hand, overrated knob of… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
“He could now inhabit the world of words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before” — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
“He had emptied the bright goblet of romance; at a single gulp he had emptied it. The glass of it lay scattered on the… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
“I want a big breakfast," said Fuchsia at last. "I want a lot to eat, I'm going to think today.” — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
“Before it had awoke to die on the instant of its waking, a score of bells and clocks had shouted midday and for a… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
“Gormenghast. Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the… — Mervyn Peake Copy Share
