Mervyn Peake Quotes

Never having had either positive cruelty or kindness shown to her by her parents, but only an indifference, she was not conscious of what it was that she missed—affection.

Let go of my arm, or I will scream for God."
"He never helped you. Have you forgotten?

At an ink-stained desk, with his chin cupped in his hands, Titus was contemplating, as in a dream, the chalk-marks on the blackboard. They represented a sum in short division, but might as well have been some hieroglyphic message from a moonstruck prophet to his lost tribe a thousand years ago.

What is Time, O sister of similar features, that you speak of it so subserviently? Are we to be the slaves of the sun, that secondhand, overrated knob of gilt, or of his sister, that fatuous circle of silver paper? A curse upon their ridiculous dictatorship!

Autumn returned to Gormenghast like a dark spirit re-entering its stronghold.

Pompous as only failures can be.

His mind fell asleep. His wits fell awake. His cock trembled like a harp-string.

The walls of Gormenghast were like the walls of paradise or 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.

There is danger in deep water, and danger is more real than beauty in a boy’s mind.

There are times when the emotions are so clamorous and the rational working of the mind so perfunctory that there is no telling where the actual leaves off and the images of fantasy begin.

The lives of the Outer Dwellers had become almost normal again. Bitterness was their bread and rivalry their wine.

Let him play," whispered Cheeta. "Let him make believe that he's alive again.

They knew now that they could never accomplish that long carpet-journey with anything like Cutflower’s air, but he reminded them at every footstep, every inclination of the head, that the whole point of life was to be happy.

Other people’s faults can be fascinating. One’s own are dreary.

If ever he had harboured a conscience in his tough narrow breast he had by now dug out and flung away the awkward thing—flung it so far away that were he ever to need it again he could never find it.