Mervyn Peake Quotes & Sayings

Keda's oldness was the work of fate, alchemy. An occult agedness. A transparent darkness. A broken and mysterious grove. A tragedy, a glory, a decay. - Titus Groan — Mervyn Peake

No eye may see dispassionately. There is no comprehension at a glance. Only the recognition of damsel, horse or fly and the assumption of damsel, horse or fly; and so with dreams and beyond, for what haunts the heart will, when it is found, leap foremost, blinding the eye and leaving the main of Life in darkness. — Mervyn Peake

Let them touch him. For every hair that's hurt I'll stop a heart. — Mervyn Peake

Behind him she saw something which by contrast with the alien incalculable figure before her, was close and real. It was something which she understood, something which she could never do without, or be without, for it seemed as though it were her own self, her own body, at which she gazed and which lay so intimately upon the skyline. Gormenghast. The long, notched outline of her home. It was now his background. It was a screen of walls and towers pocked with windows. He stood against it, an intruder, imposing himself so vividly, so solidly, against her world, his head overtopping the loftiest of its towers. — Mervyn Peake

Mount and begone. The world awaits you. — Mervyn Peake

It was as though Cutflower was so glad to be alive that he never lived. Every moment was vivid, a coloured thing, a trill or a crackle of words in the air. Who could imagine, while Cutflower was around, that there were such vulgar monsters as death, birth, love, art and pain around the corner? It was too embarrassing to contemplate. If Cutflower knew of them he kept it secret. Over their gaping and sepulchral deeps he skimmed now here, now there, in his private canoe, changing his course with a flick of his paddle when death's black whale, or the red squid of passion, lifted for a moment its body from the brine. — Mervyn Peake

But there were also times when she cried out in the darkness biting her lips - cried out against the substance of her age: for it was now that she should be young; now above all other times, with the wisdom in her, the wisdom that was frittered away in her 'teens', set aside in her twenties, now, lying there, palpable and with forty summers gone. She clenched her hands together. What good was wisdom; what good was anything when the fawn is fled from the grove? — Mervyn Peake

In great thick dusty books he read
And hardly ever went to bed
Before it was eleven.

- One Day When They Had Settled Down — Mervyn Peake

The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and every cold stone breathed it out. The tortured trees by the dark lake burned and dripped, their leaves snatched by the wind were whirled in wild circles through the towers. The clouds mouldered as they lay coiled, or shifted themselves uneasily upon the stone skyfield, sending up wreathes that drifted through the turrets and swarmed up hidden walls. — Mervyn Peake

He had emptied the bright goblet of romance; at a single gulp he had emptied it. The glass of it lay scattered on the floor. — Mervyn Peake

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

The road was wet with rain, black and shiny like oilskin. The reflection of the street lamps wallowed like yellow jelly-fish. A bus was approaching - a bus to Piccadilly, a bus to the never-never land - a bus to death or glory.
I found neither. I found something which haunts me still.
The great bus swayed as it sped. The black street gleamed. Through the window a hundred faces fluttered by as though the leaves of a dark book were being flicked over. And I sat there, with a sixpenny ticket in my hand. What was I doing! Where was I going?
("Same Time, Same Place") — Mervyn Peake

Years on end, and swords on end - where will it end, if our ears unbend - what shall I spend on a wrinkled friend in a pair of tights like a bunch of lights? — Mervyn Peake

For what is more lovable than failure? — Mervyn Peake

The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great coloured surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry upon his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in love. — Mervyn Peake

The emotional, loving, moody child had small chance of developing into a happy woman. Had she as a girl been naturally joyus yet all that had befallen her must surely have driven away the bright birds, one by one, from her breast. As it was, made of more sombre clay, capable of deep happiness, but more easily drawn to the dark than the light, Fuchsia was even more open to the cruel winds of circumstance which appeared to have singled her out for particular punishment. — Mervyn Peake

But Fuchsia might as well have been carved from dark marble. Only her tears moved. — Mervyn Peake

She was gauche in movement and in a sense, ugly of face, but with how small a twist might she not suddenly have become beautiful. Her sullen mouth was full and rich - her eyes smouldered.
A yellow scarf hung loosely around her neck. Her shapeless dress was a flaming red.
For all the straightness of her back she walked with a slouch.
"Come here," said Lord Groan as she was about to pass him and the doctor.
"Yes father," she said huskily.
"Where have you been for the last fortnight, Fuchsia?"
"Oh, here and there, father," she said, staring at her shoes. She tossed her long hair and it flapped down her back like a pirate's flag. She stood in about as awkward a manner as could be conceived. Utterly unfeminine - no man could have invented it. — 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

So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage. So limp of body that their purple dresses appear no more indicative of housing nerves and sinews than when they hang suspended from their hooks. — 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. — Mervyn Peake

From daybreak to sunset she turned her thoughts, like boulders, over. She set them in long lines. She rearranged their order ... — Mervyn Peake

Gormenghast.
Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracts. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet beats away from a choked river. Deep in a fist of stone a doll's hand wriggles, warm rebellious on the frozen palm. A shadow shifts its length. A spider stirs ...
And darkness winds between the characters.
- Gormenghast — Mervyn Peake

It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt. But on an occasion such as this it was different, for the spirit of convention was being rigorously adhered to, and in between his ribs Mr. Flay experienced twinges of pleasure. — Mervyn Peake

Steerpike was, of course, alive with ideas and projects. These two half-witted women were a gift. That they should be the sisters of Lord Sepulchrave was of tremendous strategic value. They would prove an advance on the Prunesquallors, if not intellectually at any rate socially, and that at the moment was what mattered. And in any case, the lower the mentality of his employers the more scope for his own projects. — Mervyn Peake

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

Each day we live is a glass room
Until we break it with the thrusting
Of the spirit and pass through
The splintered walls to the green pastures
Where the birds and buds are breaking
Into fabulous song and hue
By the still waters.
- Each Day We Live is a Glass Room — Mervyn Peake

Drear ritual turned its wheel. The ferment of the heart, within these walls, was mocked by every length of sleeping shadow. The passions, no greater than candle flames, flickered in Time's yawn, for Gormenghast, huge and adumbrate, out-crumbles all. — Mervyn Peake

Of Swelter's acreage, only a perch or two here and there might, if broken, prove vulnerable loam. That he bled profusely could prove little. There was blood in him to revitalize an anaemic army, with enough left over to cool the guns. Placed end to end, his blood vessels might have coiled up the Tower of Flints and half way down again like a Virginia creeper
a vampire's home from home. — 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 there is a roaring and a bellowing and a cracking of bones. And sometimes there is silence when, lolling on your thrones, your slaves adore you. — Mervyn Peake

There was a library and it is ashes. Let its long length assemble. Than its stone walls its paper walls are thicker; armoured with learning, with philosophy, with poetry that drifts or dances clamped though it is in midnight. Shielded with flax and calfskin and a cold weight of ink, there broods the ghost of Sepulchrave, the melancholy Earl, seventy-sixth lord of half-light. — Mervyn Peake

Through her, in microcosm, the wide earth sobbed. The starglobe sank in her; the colours faded. The death-dew rose and the wild birds in her breast climbed to her throat and gathered songless, hovering, all tumult, wing to wing, so ardent for those climes where all things end. — Mervyn Peake

I am your boat! I am your crew
Your rudder and your mast -
Your friend, I am your limpet too
And your elastoplast.
- Tintinnabulum — Mervyn Peake

Oh how I hate people! — Mervyn Peake

Take him away. Prepare a feast. Forget nothing. My crown: the golden cutlery. The poison bottles; and the fumes; the wreaths of ivy and the bloody joints; the chains; the bowl of nettles; the spices; the baskets of fresh grass; the skulls and spines; the ribs and shoulder-blades. Forget nothing or, by the blindness of my sockets, I will have your hearts out. Take him away ... — Mervyn Peake

Here, are the stiffening hills, here, the rich cargo
Congealed in the dark arteries,
Old veins
That hold Glamorgan's blood.
The midnight miner in the secret seams,
Limb, life, and bread.
- Rhondda Valley — Mervyn Peake

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

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 between them a vacuum, a gaping segment like a slice cut from a melon. It was horrible. It was as though nature had lost control. As though the smile, as a concept, as a manifestation of pleasure, had been a mistake, for here on the face of Swelter the idea had been abused. — Mervyn Peake

If seeing her an hour before her last
Weak cough into all blackness I could yet
Be held by chalk-white walls
- The Consumptive. Belsen 1945 — Mervyn Peake

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

Glorious,' said Steerpike, 'is a dictionary word. 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. In dead and shackled language, my dears, you *are* glorious, but oh, to give vent to a brand new sounds that might convince you of what I really think of you, as you sit there in your purple splendour, side by side! But no, it is impossible. Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia. Dead words defy me. I can make no sound, dear ladies, that is apt.' 'You could try,' said Clarice. 'We aren't busy.' She smoothed the shining fabric of her dress with her long, lifeless fingers. 'Impossible,' replied the youth, rubbing his chin. 'Quite impossible. Only believe in my admiration for your beauty that will one day be recognized by the whole castle. Meanwhile, preserve all dignity and silent power in your twin bosoms. — Mervyn Peake

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

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. — Mervyn Peake

The laugh of Doctor Prunesquallor was part of his conversation and quite alarming when heard for the first time. It appeared to be out of control as though it were a part of his voice, a top-storey of his vocal range that only came into its own when the doctor laughed. There was something about it of wind whistling through high rafters and there was a good deal of the horse's whinny, with a touch of the curlew. When giving vent to it, the doctor's mouth would be practically immobile like the door of a cabinet left ajar. Between the laughs he would speak very rapidly, which made the sudden stillness of his beautifully shaven jaws at the time of laughter all the more extraordinary. The laugh was not necessarily connected with humour at all. It was simply a part of his conversation. — Mervyn Peake

How's the blood-stream, my dear, invaluable little woman? How's the blood-stream?" ...
"It's quite comfortable, sir ... I think, sir, thank you." ...
"Aha!" ... "a comfortable stream, is it? Aha! v-e-r-y good. V-e-r-y good. Dawdling 'twixt hill and hill, no doubt. Meandering through groves of bone, threading the tissues and giving what sustenance it can to your dear old body ... I am so glad. But in yourself - right deep down in yourself - how do you feel? Carnally speaking, are you at peace - from the dear grey hairs of your head to the patter of your little feet - are you at peace?"
"What does he mean, dear?" said poor Mrs. Slagg, clutching Fuschia's arm ...
"He wants to know if you feel well or not. — Mervyn Peake

You are a clever little monster,' said the Doctor, tossing off another cognac and placing the glass upon the table with a click. 'A diabolically clever little monster.' 'That is what I hoped you would realize, Doctor,' said Steerpike. 'But haven't all ambitious people soemthing of the monstrous about them? You, sir, for instance, if you will forgive me, are a little bit monstrous.' 'But, my poor youth, said Prunesquallor, beginning to pace the room, 'there is not the minutest molecule of ambition in my anatomy, monstrous though it may appear to you, ha, ha, ha! — Mervyn Peake

I shall live alone. Always alone. In a house or a tree.'
Fuchsia started to chew at a fresh grass blade.
'Someone will come then, if I live alone. Someone from another kind of world - a new world - not from this world, but someone who is different, and he will fall in love with me at once because I live alone and aren't like the other beastly things in this world, and he'll enjoy having me because of my pride. — Mervyn Peake

She stepped outwards into the dim atmosphere, and falling, was most fabulously lit by the moon and the sun. — Mervyn Peake

Equality,' said Steerpike,' is the thing. It is the only true and central premise from which constructive ideas can radiate freely and be operated without prejudice. Absolute equality of status. Equality of wealth. Equality of power. — 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 dictatorship! — Mervyn Peake

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

Before it had awoke to die on the instant of its waking, a score of bells and clocks had shouted midday and for a minute after its death, from near and far the clappers in their tents of rusted iron clanged across Gormenghast. — Mervyn Peake

His voice is unmuffled - it is like a bell, clearly ringing in the night of our confusion; but the clarity is the clarity of imponderable depth ... — Mervyn Peake

For what use are books to anyone whose days are like a rook's nest with every twig a duty. — Mervyn Peake

[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience. — Mervyn Peake

As the figure moved before him he followed the muscles as they wove beneath the skin. he was not only fighting with an assailant who was awaiting for that split second in which to strike him dead, but he was stabbing at a masterpiece
at sculpture that leapt and heaved, at a marvel of inky shadow and silver light. A great wave of nausea surged through him and his knife felt putrid in his hand. His body went on fighting — Mervyn Peake

Indeed he had worn that piece of furniture - or symbol of bone-laziness - into such a shape as made the descent of any other body than his own into that crater of undulating horsehair a hazardous enterprise. — 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

Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It (Gormenghast trilogy) is a very, very great work ... a classic of our age. — Mervyn Peake

His mind had been working away behind his high forehead. Unimaginative himself he could recognize imagination in her: he had come upon one whose whole nature was the contradiction of his own. He knew that behind her simplicity was something he could never have. Something he despised as impractical. Something which would never carry her to power or riches, but would retard her progress and keep her apart in a world of her own make-believe. To win her favour he must talk in her own language. — Mervyn Peake

Civilized people don't feel. — Mervyn Peake

Why break the heart that never beat from love? — Mervyn Peake

Seeing an Earl as an owl on a mantelpiece, and having part of one's face removed by a cat, both on the same morning, can temporarily undermine the self-control of any man. — 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. What was more absolute? — Mervyn Peake

Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia. — 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 have stopped the occurrence, so suddenly it sprang upon them. — Mervyn Peake

I saw a Puffin
In the Bay of Baffin
Sittin on Nuffin
And it was Laffin. — Mervyn Peake

It was obvious that their sorrows were conjoined. — Mervyn Peake

He knew that he was caught up in one of those stretches of time when for anything to happen normally would be abnormal. The dawn was too tense and highly charged for any common happening to survive. — Mervyn Peake

Bellgrove, eminently lovable, because of his individual weakness, his incompetence, his failure as a man, a scholar, a leader or even as a companion, was neverless utterly alone. For the weak, above all, have their friends. Yet his gentleness, his pretence at authority, his palpable humanity were unable, for some reason or other, to function. He was demonstrably the type of venerable and absent-minded professor about whom all the sharp-beaked boys of the world should swarm. — 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

His habitual melancholy was changing day by day into something more sinister. There were moments when he would desecrate the crumbling and mournful mask of his face with a smile more horrible than the darkest lineaments of pain. Across the stoniness of his eyes a strange light would pass for a moment, as though the moon were flaring on the gristle, and his lips would open and the gash of his mouth would widen in a dead, climbing curve — Mervyn Peake

Noon, ripe as thunder and silent as thought, had fled unfingered. — Mervyn Peake

And a ton came down on a coloured road,
And a ton came down on a gaol,
And a ton came down on a freckled girl,
And a ton on the black canal,
And a ton came down on a hospital,
And a ton on a manuscript,
And a ton shot up through the dome of a church,
And a ton roared down to the crypt.
And a ton danced over the Thames and filled
A thousand panes with stars,
And the splinters leapt on the Surrey shore
To the tune of a thousand scars. — Mervyn Peake

My passion,
My queen of fire and dread;
Divine amalgamation
Of swedes and cooper-thread,
Unstitch your irritation
And kiss me when I'm dead. — Mervyn Peake

For answer Mr Flay shot his head forward out of his collar and croaked, 'Silence! you kitchen thing. Hold your tongue you greasy fork. — Mervyn Peake

Prunesquallor, as urbane as ever, had nevertheless something in his fish-like eyes that might almost be described as determination. One glance at his sister was sufficient to make him realize that to attempt to reason with her would be about as fruitful as to try to christianize a vulture. — Mervyn Peake

I am clever enough to know that I am clever. — Mervyn Peake

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

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

To live at all is miracle enough. — Mervyn Peake

Another comber of far pleasure followed the first, 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. — Mervyn Peake

Home is a room dappled with firelight: there are pictures and books. And when the rain sighs, and the acorns fall, there are patterns of leaves against the drawn curtains. Home is where I was safe. Home is what I fled from. — Mervyn Peake

Are you lishening, my pretty vermin, are you lishening? — 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

His youth had been so long ago that he could remember nothing of it but he presumed, erroneously, that he had tasted the purple fruit, had broken hearts and hymens, had tosses flowers to ladies on balconies, had drunk champagne out of their shoes and generally been irresistible. — Mervyn Peake

His staff had shaken hands with her as though a woman was merely another kind of man. Fools! The seeds of Eve were in this radiant creature. The lullabyes of half a million years throbbed in her throat. Had they no sense of wonder, no reverence, no pride? — Mervyn Peake

She could feel the blood flowing within her and she felt that she must die or break forth into leaves and flowers. It was not passion she felt: not the passion of the body, though that was there, but rather an exultation, a reaching for life, for the whole of the life which she was capable, and in that life which she but dimly divined was centered love, the love for a man. She was not in love with Rantel: she was in love with what he meant to her as someone she could love. — Mervyn Peake

Rottcodd was unmarried. An aloofness and even a nervousness was apparent on first acquaintance and the ladies held a peculiar horror for him. His, then, was an ideal existence, living alone day and night in a long loft. Yet
occasionally, for one reason or another, a servant or a member of the household would make an unexpected appearance and startle him with some question appertaining to ritual, and then the dust would settle once more in the hall and on the soul of Mr.
Rottcodd. — Mervyn Peake

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. — Mervyn Peake

I do not understand your love,' he said. — Mervyn Peake

The crags of the mountain were ruthless in the moon; cold, deadly and shining. Distance had no meaning. The tangled glittering of the forest roof rolled away, but its furthermost reaches were brought suddenly nearer in a bound by the terrifying effect of proximity in the mountain that they swarmed. The mountain was neither far away nor was it close at hand. It arose starkly, enormously, across the lens of the eye. The hollow itself was a cup of light. Every blade of the grass was of consequence, and the few scattered stones held an authority that made their solid, separate marks upon the brain - each one with its own unduplicated shape: each rising brightly from the ink of its own spilling. — Mervyn Peake

She and her sister were dressed in purple, with gold buckles at their throats by way of brooches, and another gold buckle each at the end of hatpins which they wore through their grey hair in order apparently to match their brooches. Their faces, identical to the point of indecency, were quite expressionless, as though they were the preliminary lay-outs for faces and were waiting for sentience to be injected. — Mervyn Peake

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 it s Outer Walls. — 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

With what characters she had filled this lost stage of emptiness! It was here that she would see the people of her imagination, the fierce figures of her making, as they strolled from corner to corner, brooded like monsters or flew through the air like seraphs with burning wings, or danced, or fought, or laughed, or cried. This was her attic of make-believe, where she would watch her mind's companions advancing or retreating across the dusty floor. — Mervyn Peake

The Aunts put their arms about one another so that their faces were cheek to cheek, and from this doublehead they gazed up at Steerpike with a row of four equidistant eyes. There was no reason why there should not have been forty, or four hundred of them. It so happened that only four had been removed from a dead and endless frieze whose inexhaustible and repetitive theme was forever, eyes, eyes, eyes. — Mervyn Peake

It was then that the Boy went through his darkest hell of all: the long ache of his body, acute as it was, was yet forgotten or disposed of in some way, for he was filled with a disembodied pain, an illness so penetrating, so horrible, that had he been given the opportunity to die he would have taken it. No normal sensation could find a way through this overpowering nausea of the soul that filled him. — Mervyn Peake

He does not listen for an answer, but yawns, his face opening lewdly upon regions compared with which nudity becomes a milliner's invention. — Mervyn Peake