Mervyn Peake: Trending quotes

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Mervyn Peake: 182 quotes3 likes

“What had his memory done to her that he should now be seeing a creature so radically at variance with the image that had filled his mind?”

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 68, section 1 (p. 730)

“And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

“I am the wilderness lost in man.”

“Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

“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 book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

“To live at all is miracle enough.”

Poem of the same title (also on Peake's tombstone)
Source: Collected Poems

“Why break the heart that never beat from love?”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

“Oh how I hate people!”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

“I am clever enough to know that I am clever.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

“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.”

"Each Day I Live in a Glass Room," A Reverie of Bone and other Poems (1967)

“For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

“I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am;
Maelström of passions in that hidden sea
Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me;
And in small compass the dark waters cram.”

Source: Collected Poems

“Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

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

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 2 “The Great Kitchen” (p. 18)
Context: It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.

“Something to remember, that: cats for missiles.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan

“But we have seen it in the air,
A fairy like a William Pear”

Poem O Here it is

“This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 1 “The Hall of the Bright Carvings” (p. 9)

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

Poem in The Glassblowers (1950)

“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.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 37 “The Grotto” (p. 211)

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

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 69 (p. 743)