Quotes by Mervyn Peake

About Mervyn Peake:

Mervyn Laurence Peake is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. The three works were part of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, the completion of which was prevented by his death. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I want a big breakfast," said Fuchsia at last. "I want a lot to eat, I'm going to think today.

Mervyn Peake

But his mind saw nothing of all this. His mind was engaged in a warfare of the gods. His mind paced outwards over no-man's-land, over the fields of the slain, paced to the rhythm of the blood's red bugles. To be alone and evil! To be a god at bay. Wh...

Mervyn Peake

Meanwhile Bellgrove had been savouring love's rare aperitif, the ageless language of the eyes.

Mervyn Peake

How merciful a thing is man's ignorance of his immediate future! What a ghastly, paralysing thing it would have been if all those present could have known what was about to happen within a matter of seconds! For nothing short of pre-knowledge could h...

Mervyn Peake

She had shown him by her independence how it was only fear that held people together. The fear of being alone and the fear of being different.

Mervyn Peake

And then he began to laugh in a peculiar way of his own which was both violent and soundless. His heavy reclining body, draped in its black gown, heaved to and fro. His knees drew themselves up to his chin. His arms dangled over the sides of the chai...

Mervyn Peake

His mother stood before him like a monument. He saw her great outline through the blur of his weakness and his passion. She made no movement at all.

Mervyn Peake

She had expressed herself, as women will, in a smug broadside of pastel shades. Nothing clashed because nothing had the strength to clash; everything murmured of safety among the hues; all was refinement.

Mervyn Peake

It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others.

Mervyn Peake

One thing at a time,' said the Boy. 'You must be patient. This is a day of hope and wild revenge. Do not interrupt me. I am a courier from another world. I bring you golden words. Listen!' said the Boy. 'Where I come from there is no more fear. But t...

Mervyn Peake

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 Prin...

Mervyn Peake

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 dictat...

Mervyn Peake

Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.

Mervyn Peake

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.

Mervyn Peake

And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?

Mervyn Peake

For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.

Mervyn Peake

Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia.

Mervyn Peake

This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shado...

Mervyn Peake

Swelter, as soon as he saw who it was, stopped dead, and across his face little billows of flesh ran swiftly here and there until, as though they had determined to adhere to the same impulse, they swept up into both oceans of soft cheek, leaving betw...

Mervyn Peake

He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.

Mervyn Peake

Author Bio

  • NameMervyn Peake
  • DescriptionEnglish writer, artist, poet and illustrator
  • AliasesMervyn Laurence Peake
  • BornJuly 9, 1911
  • DiedNovember 17, 1968
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Poet; Novelist; Illustrator