Mervyn Peake Quotes

Quotes about:

• Each day I live in a glass room unless I break it with the thrusting of my senses and pass through the splintered walls to the great landscape.

  Mervyn Peake

  Wall, Glasses, Great Day

  51 Copy quote

• This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

  Mervyn Peake

  Night, Ivy, Long

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.12, The Overlook Press

  38 Copy quote

• To live at all is miracle enough.

  Mervyn Peake

  Inspirational, Miracle, Religion

  Mervyn Peake (2012). “Collected Poems”, p.307, Carcanet

  17 Copy quote

• There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe.

  Mervyn Peake

  Air, Silence, Scythes

  Mervyn Peake (2008). “Titus Alone”, p.110, The Overlook Press

  10 Copy quote

• He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.

  Mervyn Peake

  Independence, Saws, Revolt

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.21, The Overlook Press

  5 Copy quote

• As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.

  Mervyn Peake

  Ocean, Imagination, Effort

  12 Copy quote

• The sun sank with a sob and darkness waded in from all horizons so that the sky contracted and there was no more light left in the world, when, at this very moment of annihilation, the moon, as though she had been waiting for her cue, sailed up the night.

  Mervyn Peake

  Moon, Night, Light

  Mervyn Peake (2008). “Titus Alone”, p.17, The Overlook Press

  11 Copy quote

• There is a brotherhood among the kindly- Closer and defter and more integral- Than any of aisle or coven- For love rang out before the chapel bell

  Mervyn Peake

  Kindness, Brotherhood, Bells

  10 Copy quote

• Mount and begone. The world awaits you.

  Mervyn Peake

  World

  Mervyn Peake (1995). “The Gormenghast Novels”, Overlook Books

  5 Copy quote

• Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.

  Mervyn Peake

  Lonely, All Alone, Lingering

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.118, The Overlook Press

  7 Copy quote

• We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.

  Mervyn Peake

  Printed Word, Black, Sound

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.230, The Overlook Press

  7 Copy quote

• I am the wilderness lost in man.

  Mervyn Peake

  Men, Wilderness, Lost

  5 Copy quote

• Yet not with all of me am I in love. Too much of my own quietness is with me.

  Mervyn Peake

  Too Much, My Own, Quietness

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.160, The Overlook Press

  11 Copy quote

• For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.

  Mervyn Peake

  Lifeless

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Gormenghast”, p.72, The Overlook Press

  8 Copy quote

• The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and every cold stone breathed it out. The tortured trees by the dark lake burned and dripped, their leaves snatched by the wind were whirled in wild circles through the towers. The clouds mouldered as they lay coiled, or shifted themselves uneasily upon the stone skyfield, sending up wreathes that drifted through the turrets and swarmed up hidden walls.

  Mervyn Peake

  Wall, Dark, Lakes

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.161, The Overlook Press

  10 Copy quote

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

  Mervyn Peake

  Thinking, Want, Today

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.62, The Overlook Press

  6 Copy quote

• The moon slid inexorably into its zenith, the shadows shrivelling to the feet of all that cast them, and as Rantel approached the hollow at the hem of the Twisted Woods he was treading in a pool of his own midnight.

  Mervyn Peake

  Moon, Feet, Shadow

  Mervyn Peake (1995). “The Gormenghast Novels”, Overlook Books

  4 Copy quote

• His was not the hatred that arises suddenly like a storm and as suddenly abates. It was, once the initial shock of anger and pain was over, a calculated thing that grew in a bloodless way.

  Mervyn Peake

  Pain, Hatred, Storm

  Mervyn Peake (1995). “The Gormenghast Novels”, Overlook Books

  5 Copy quote

• In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last enormous, unanswerable question.

  Mervyn Peake

  Pain, Real, Doors

  4 Copy quote

• Why break the heart that never beat from love?

  Mervyn Peake

  Heart, Break, Beats

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.348, The Overlook Press

  4 Copy quote

• Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia.

  Mervyn Peake

  Life Is, Gormenghast

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.230, The Overlook Press

  7 Copy quote

• There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humor. It is naked noise and naked malice.

  Mervyn Peake

  Laughter, Ignorance, Ice

  6 Copy quote

• Countless candles dribbled with hot wax, and their flames, like little flags, fluttered in the unchartered currents of air. Thousands of lamps, naked, or shuttered behind coloured glass, burned with their glows of purple, amber, grass-green, blue, blood red and even grey. The walls of Gormenghast were like the walls of paradise or like the walls of an inferno. The colours were devilish or angelical according to the colour of the mind that watched them. They swam, those walls, with the hues of hell, with the tints of Zion. The breasts of the plumaged seraphim; the scales of Satan.

  Mervyn Peake

  Wall, Purple, Glasses

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Gormenghast”, p.226, The Overlook Press

  8 Copy quote

• 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 gilt, or of his sister, that fatuous circle of silver paper? A curse upon their ridiculous dictatorship!

  Mervyn Peake

  Time, Hands, Circles

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.239, The Overlook Press

  16 Copy quote

• Seeing an Earl as an owl on a mantelpiece, and having part of one's face removed by a cat, both on the same morning, can temporarily undermine the self-control of any man.

  Mervyn Peake

  Morning, Cat, Men

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.309, The Overlook Press

  4 Copy quote

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