Mervyn Peake: Timing

Mervyn Peake was English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. Explore interesting quotes on timing.

Mervyn Peake: 182 quotes3 likes

“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

“He knew that he was caught up in one of those stretches of time when for anything to happen normally would be abnormal. The dawn was too tense and highly charged for any common happening to survive.”

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 57, section 3 (p. 686)

“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.”

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 35 (p. 577)

“It was thought that he had genius, if only because he had been able to delegate his duties in so intricate a way that there was never any need for him to do anything at all. His signature, which was necessary from time to time at the end of long notices which no one read, was always faked, and even the ingenious system of delegation whereon his greatness rested was itself worked out by another.”

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 11 (p. 440)

“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!”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 40 “Meanwhile” (p. 234)

“An aching to be once again in the land from which he grew gave him no rest. There is no calm for those who are uprooted. They are wanderers, homesick and defiant. Love itself is helpless to heal them though the dust rises with every footfall—drifts down the corridors—settles on branch or cornice—each breath an inhalation from the past so that the lungs, like a miner’s, are dark with bygone times.
Whatever they eat, whatever they drink, is never the bread of home or the corn of their own valleys. It is never the wine of their own vineyards. It is a foreign brew.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 34 (p. 862)

““Then be silent,” said Titus, and in spite of his anger, the heady wine of autocracy tasted sweet upon his tongue—sweet and dangerous—for he was only now learning that he had power over others, not only through the influence of his birthright but through a native authority that was being wielded for the first time—and all this he knew to be dangerous, for as it grew, this bullying would taste ever sweeter and fiercer and the naked cry of freedom would become faint and the Thing who had taught him freedom would become no more than a memory.”

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 77 (p. 774)

“And yet, though his eyes shone with the thrill of his discovery, he suffered at the same time a pang of resentment—a resentment that this alien realm should be able to exist in a world that appeared to have no reference to his home and which seemed, in fact, supremely self-sufficient.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 18 (p. 831)

“Change and growth cannot be halted, time must run on. That is the whole moral of the three books.”

Colin Greenland, Beowulf to Kafka: Mervyn Peake’s Titus Alone, reprinted in the omnibus edition The Gormenghast Novels published by The Overlook Press, p. 1141