Quotes from book
Titus Alone

Titus Alone
Mervyn Peake

Titus Alone is a novel written by Mervyn Peake and first published in 1959. It is the third work in the Gormenghast trilogy. The other works are Titus Groan, and Gormenghast. With the trilogy, a fourth work, the novella Boy in Darkness, and a fifth, the fragment Titus Awakes, are often considered part of a larger "Gormenghast series". It was re-edited by Langdon Jones in 1970 using the original manuscript.

“Pompous as only failures can be.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 82 (p. 959)

““You have a rough manner,” said Titus. “But you have saved me twice. Why are you helping me?”
“I have no idea,” said Muzzlehatch. “There must be something wrong with my brain.””

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 29 (p. 852)

“What was important, now, with her eyes bent upon him, and the shadow of a branch trembling across her breast, was the immemorial game of love: no less a game for being grave. No less grave for being wild. Grave as a great green sky. Grave as a surgeon’s knife.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 42 (p. 881)

““Life must be various, incongruous, vile and electric. Life must be ruthless and as full of love as may be found in a jaguar’s fang.”
“I like the way you talk, young man,” said Grass, “but I don’t know what you’re saying.””

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 24 (p. 841)

““Let go of my arm, or I will scream for God.”
“He never helped you. Have you forgotten?””

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 56 (p. 910)

“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)

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

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 5 (p. 815)

“Once there were islands all a-sprout with palms: and coral reefs and sands as white as milk. What is there now but a vast shambles of the heart? Filth, squalor, and a world of little men.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 114 (p. 1012)

“There is no point in erecting a structure,” said Muzzlehatch, taking no notice of Titus’s question, “unless someone else pulls it down. There is no value in a rule until it is broken. There is nothing in life unless there is death at the back of it. Death, dear boy, leaning over the edge of the world and grinning like a boneyard.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 14 (p. 826)

“So you thought you’d come back, my wicked one. Where have you been?”
“In hell,” said Titus. “Swigging blood and munching scorpions.”
“That must have been great fun, my darling.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

“Not so,” said Titus, “hell is overrated.”
Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 42 (p. 881)

““I am a beggar.”
“You are a travesty,” said Titus, “and when you die the earth will breathe again.””

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 16 (p. 829)

“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)

““There’s something else, Mr. Muzzlehatch.”
“I’m sure there is. In fact there is everything else.””

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 47 (p. 893)

“Art should be artless, not heartless.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 24 (p. 845)

“Let him play,” whispered Cheeta. “Let him make believe that he’s alive again.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 105 (p. 1000)

“His mind fell asleep. His wits fell awake. His cock trembled like a harp-string.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 42 (p. 881)

“Life must be various, incongruous, vile and electric. Life must be ruthless and as full of love as may be found in a jaguar’s fang.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

“I like the way you talk, young man,” said Grass, “but I don’t know what you’re saying.”
Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 24 (p. 841)

“Let go of my arm, or I will scream for God.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

“He never helped you. Have you forgotten?”
Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 56 (p. 910)

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