Mervyn Peake quotes

" There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humor. It is naked noise and naked malice. " # Laughter # Devil # Humor

" Each day I live in a glass room unless I break it with the thrusting of my senses and pass through the splintered walls to the great landscape. " # Senses # Greatness # Life and Living

" Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. " # Architecture # Masses # Love

" This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. " # Advice # Heaven # Love

" Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracks. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue off spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet bears away from a choked river. " # Literary Criticism # Love # Silence

" But we have seen it in the air, A fairy like a William Pear " # Knowledge # Happiness # Belief

" O'er seas that have no beaches To end their waves upon, I floated with twelve peaches, A sofa and a swan. " # Detail # America # Wilderness

" I saw all of a sudden No sign of any ship. " # Government

" It's not their fault if, in the heat Of their transactions, I repeat It's not their fault if vampires meet And gurgle in their spats. " # Death and Dying # Faults # Friends and Friendship

" When Uncle Jake Became a snake He never found it out; And so as no one mentions it One sees him still about. " # Problems # Truth # Failure