“It was when he saw the great walls looming above him that he began to run.
He ran as though to obey an order. And this was so, though he knew nothing of it. He ran in the acknowledgement of a law as old as the laws of his home, the law of flesh and blood. The law of longing. The law of change. The law of youth. The law that separates the generations, that draws the child from his mother, the boy from his father, the youth from both.
And it was the law of quest. The law that few obey for lack of valour. The craving of the young for the unknown and all that lies beyond the tenuous skyline.”

— Mervyn Peake

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 80 (p. 805)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Mervyn Peake 91

English writer, artist, poet and illustrator 1911–1968

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