Quotes from Mervyn Peake

Prunesquallor was in his study.

beat upon the door.

He was too young to understand the implications of his status, but old enough to sense his uniqueness.

As the Earl of Gormenghast he could never be alone. He could only be lonely.

As he trilled, as he prattled, as he indulged in his spontaneous 'conceits', as he gestured, fop-like and grotesque, his magnified eyes skidding to and fro behind the lenses of his glasses, like soap at the bottom of a bath, his brain was often other-where, and these days it was well occupied.

Blake When I remember how his spirits throve Amid dark city streets he did not see Because his eyes were veiled with poetry And at his heart the Prophets wings were wove, When I recall the squalor of his days And then remember what rare fire was spent When amid quenchless words he died, I praise Whatever Gods we're his, in wonderment

the roaring repression that could do no more than bleat through her voice;

Poem Out of the overlapping Leaves of my brain came tapping… Tapping… a voice that is not mine alone: Nor can the woodpecker Claim it as his own: the flicker Deep in the foliage belongs to neither Birds, men or dreams. It is as far away as childhood seems.

It was a brand-new graveyard.

who can tell in which direction the minds of phantoms move?)

Fuchsia, for whom the fine art of procedure held less lure, found in old Barquentine a creature to hide from and to hate – not for any specific reason, but with the hatred of the young for the authority vested in age.

An infiltration of the morning's sun gave the various objects a certain vague structure but in no way dispelled the darkness. Here and there a thin beam of light threaded the warm brooding dusk and was filled with slowly moving motes like an attenuate firmament of stars revolving in grave order. One of these narrow beams lit Fuchsia's forehead and shoulder, and another plucked a note of crimson from her dress.

There he was. The infant Titus. His eyes were open but he was quite still. The puckered-up face of the newly-born child, old as the world, wise as the roots of trees. Sin was there and goodness, love, pity and horror, and even beauty for his eyes were pure violet. Earth's passions, earth's griefs, earth's incongruous, ridiculous humours – dormant, yet visible in the wry pippin of a face.

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

The old man was aware of only one virtue – Obedience to Tradition. The destiny of the Groans. The law of Gormenghast.

All this, he felt, he would now re-enter. He could inhabit the world of words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before.

for his books came suddenly before his eyes, row upon row of volumes, row upon priceless row of calf-bound Thought, of philosophy and fiction, of travel and fantasy; the stern and the ornate, the moods of gold or green, of sepia, rose, or black; the picaresque, the arabesque, the scientific – the essays, the poetry and the drama. All this, he felt, he would now re-enter. He could inhabit the world of words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before.

his books came suddenly before his eyes, row upon row of volumes, row upon priceless row of calf-bound Thought, of philosophy and fiction, of travel and fantasy; the stern and the ornate, the moods of gold or green, of sepia, rose, or black; the picaresque, the arabesque, the scientific – the essays, the poetry and the drama. All this, he felt, he would now re-enter. He could inhabit the world of words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before.

Is he 'abstract', or 'extract'? Cubish or tube-ist? A figmentist? Or pigmentist?

It took place to the accompaniment of such hideous swearing as caused his withered leg to blush beneath the sacking. It must have been hardened by many years of oaths, but this morning an awakened sense of shame at what the upper part of the body could descend to, raddled it from hip to toe. Its only consolation was that the contaminating influence had not descended lower than the lungs, and what diseases the withered leg experienced were entirely physical.

Jumping to his feet, Titus crossed the room and gazed with awe at the antagonists. He was no stranger to violence, but there was something peculiarly horrible about this duel. There they were, not thirty feet away, locked in deadly grapple, a conflict without scale. In that camel were all the camels that had ever been. Blind with a hatred far beyond its own power to invent, it fought a world of mules; of mules that since the dawn of time have bared their teeth at their intrinsic foe.

The accent was of so weird a lilt that at first Steerpike could not recognize more than one sentence in three, but he had quickly attuned himself to the original cadence and as the words fell into place Steerpike realized that he was staring at a poet.

Doctor Prunesquallor was running a long tapering finger up and down a stalactite of wax and smiling horribly.

Mrs Slagg placed her finger at her lips and gave a smile which it would be impossible to describe. It was a mixture of the cunning and the maudlin.