Quotes from Mervyn Peake

As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.

Something to remember, that: cats for missiles.

His was not the hatred that arises suddenly like a storm and as suddenly abates. It was, once the initial shock of anger and pain was over, a calculated thing that grew in a bloodless way.

There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe.

It was not certain what significance the ceremony held... but the formality was no less sacred for it being unintelligible

Cold love's the loveliest love of all. So clear, so crisp, so empty. In short, so civilized.

I sometimes think about old tombs and weeds That interwreathe among the bones of kings With cold and poisonous berry and black flower: Or ruminate upon the skulls of steeds Frailer than shells and on those luminous wings - The shoulder blades of Princes of fled power, Which now the unrecorded sandstorms grind Into so wraith-like a translucency Of tissue-thin and aqueous bone - A Reverie of Bone

He is climbing the spiral staircase of the soul of Gormenghast, bound for some pinnacle of the itching fancy - some wild, invulnerable eyrie best known to himself; where he can watch the world spread out below him, and shake exultantly his clotted wings.

I am too rich already, for my eyes mint gold. - Coloured Money

When he at least reached the door the handle had cease to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to his knees he placed his head and the vagaries of his left eye (which was for ever trying to dash up and down the vertical surface of the door), he was able by dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed eye, an eye which was not his, being not only of a different colour to his own iron marble, but being, which is more convincing, on the other side of the door.