Mervyn Peake: Trending quotes

“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?”

“I am the wilderness lost in man.”

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

“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.”

“To live at all is miracle enough.”

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

“Oh how I hate people!”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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