The ritual which his body had had to perform for fifty years had been no preparation for the unexpected. - Mervyn Peake

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 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.

The paper is breathless Under the hand And the pencil is poised Like a warlock's wand.