A spider lowered itself, fathom by fathom, on a perilous length of thread and was suddenly transfixed in the path of a sunbeam and, for an instant, w… - Mervyn Peake

There was a library and it is ashes. Let its long length assemble." These words made me a writer. When I was in middle school, my mother brought home a used paperback copy of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast…Reading this at the age of 13, I understood that fantasy, the place I was looking for, is not to be found in dragons, ghosts, or magic wands. It resides in language. Fantasy is death by owls. It’s mourning through gesture. It’s music, incantation in half-light. An inverted heart.

He also knew when to stop. In the fine art of deceit and personal advancement as in any other calling this is the hallmark of the master.

He was as young as twenty years allowed, and as old as it could make him.