Mervyn Peake

Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were…

— Mervyn Peake

Through her, in microcosm, the wide earth sobbed. The starglobe sank in her; the colours faded. The death-dew rose and the wild…

— Mervyn Peake

“Behind him she saw something which by contrast with the alien incalculable figure before her, was close and real. It was something…

— Mervyn Peake

“If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white walls -…

— Mervyn Peake

“He knew that he was caught up in one of those stretches of time when for anything to happen normally would be…

— Mervyn Peake

“Would you be so kind as to remove your redundant carcass from the door of this room, my man,’ he said, in…

— 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

“He could now inhabit the world of words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before”

— Mervyn Peake

“He had emptied the bright goblet of romance; at a single gulp he had emptied it. The glass of it lay scattered…

— 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

“Before it had awoke to die on the instant of its waking, a score of bells and clocks had shouted midday and…

— Mervyn Peake

“Gormenghast. Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue…

— Mervyn Peake

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

— Mervyn Peake

[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception…

— Mervyn Peake

Why break the heart that never beat from love?

— Mervyn Peake

“How merciful a thing is man's ignorance of his immediate future! What a ghastly, paralysing thing it would have been if all…

— 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

Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.

— Mervyn Peake

“He does not listen for an answer, but yawns, his face opening lewdly upon regions compared with which nudity becomes a milliner's…

— Mervyn Peake

“His mother stood before him like a monument. He saw her great outline through the blur of his weakness and his passion.…

— Mervyn Peake

And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees…

— Mervyn Peake

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

— Mervyn Peake

Years on end, and swords on end - where will it end, if our ears unbend - what shall I spend on…

— Mervyn Peake

“Whether the scouring, sexless eye of the bird or beast of prey disperses and sees all or concentrates and evades all saving…

— Mervyn Peake

“There he was. The infant Titus. His eyes were open but he was quite still. The puckered-up face of the newly-born child,…

— Mervyn Peake