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?

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
Save QuoteView Quote
Save Quote
Similar Quotes by mervyn-peake

The vastest things are those we may not learn.We are not taught to die, nor to be born,Nor how to burnWith love.How pitiful is our enforced returnTo those small things we are the masters of.

Mervyn Peake, Peake's Progress: Selected Writings and Drawings
Save QuoteView Quote

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, Gormenghast
Save QuoteView Quote

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 chair and were helpless. His head rolled from side to side. It was as though he were in the last stages of strychnine poisoning. But no sound came, nor did his mouth even open. Gradually the spasm grew weaker, and when the natural sand colour of his face had returned (for his corked-up laughter had turned it dark red) he began his smoking again in earnest.

Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast
Save QuoteView Quote

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

Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast
Save QuoteView Quote

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, Gormenghast
Save QuoteView Quote

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, Gormenghast
Save QuoteView Quote

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, Gormenghast
Save QuoteView Quote

For what is more lovable than failure?

Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast
Save QuoteView Quote

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, Gormenghast
Save QuoteView Quote

Consensus wisdom has it that all modern commercial fantasy novels fall into two camps: those derived from J.R.R. Tolkien and those derived from Mervyn Peake. The 'Lord of the Rings' template or the 'Gormenghast' mold.

Paul Di Filippo
Save QuoteView Quote