Mervyn Peake

“To be alive is to be mad.”

“And the memories of all the things I had known were there, in the night wind.”

“Life is a verb, not a noun.”

“He had no longer any need for home, for he carried his Gormenghast within him.”

“This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry.”

“To live at all is to be bruised.”

“For this is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human soul, to suppose that men can be governed by reason.”

“Growth is betrayal.”

“There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and that is the love of man for the world.”

“His voice was like a sword, less because of its power than its suddenness.”

“He was a library of aches and pains.”

“She was a woman of passions, and her passions were the servants of her will.”

“The silence of the great library was absolute.”

“There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity.”

“He was a creature of the shadows, a marionette of his own subconscious.”

“What a world of abstract romance was slung between the sun and the moon.”

“There is no truce with the furies.”

“How can I be lost, when I am not going anywhere?”