To live at all is miracle enough. Mervyn Peake More Quotes by Mervyn Peake More Quotes From Mervyn Peake 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. Mervyn Peake great-day wall glasses 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 shadow. Mervyn Peake ivy night long There is a brotherhood among the kindly- Closer and defter and more integral- Than any of aisle or coven- For love rang out before the chapel bell Mervyn Peake bells brotherhood kindness There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe. Mervyn Peake scythes silence air 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. Mervyn Peake effort ocean imagination Yet not with all of me am I in love. Too much of my own quietness is with me. Mervyn Peake quietness my-own too-much What is Time... That you speak of it so subserviently? Are we to be the slaves of the sun, that second-hand, overrated knob of gilt, or of his sister, that fatuous circle of silver paper? A curse upon their ridiculous dictatorship! Mervyn Peake circles time hands We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect. Mervyn Peake black printed-word sound 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 autumn wind fall I want a lot to eat, I'm going to think today. Mervyn Peake want today thinking He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt. Mervyn Peake revolt independence saws Oh how I hate people! Mervyn Peake i-hate-people hate people The sun sank with a sob and darkness waded in from all horizons so that the sky contracted and there was no more light left in the world, when, at this very moment of annihilation, the moon, as though she had been waiting for her cue, sailed up the night. Mervyn Peake light moon night The moon slid inexorably into its zenith, the shadows shrivelling to the feet of all that cast them, and as Rantel approached the hollow at the hem of the Twisted Woods he was treading in a pool of his own midnight. Mervyn Peake shadow moon feet And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself will cry for insurrection! For tomorrow is also a day - and Titus has entered his stronghold. Mervyn Peake green flames and-love I was brooding, boy. Than which there is no richer pastime. It muffles one with rotting plumes. It gives forth sullen music. It is the smell of home. Mervyn Peake smell home boys Why break the heart that never beat from love? Mervyn Peake beats break heart I am the wilderness lost in man. Mervyn Peake wilderness lost men 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 storm pain hatred 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. Mervyn Peake iron eye doors
