Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mervyn Peake
Age: 57 †
Born: 1911
Born: July 9
Died: 1968
Died: November 17
Illustrator
Novelist
Painter
Poet
Writer
Mervyn Laurence Peake
Mervyn L. Peake
Mervyn Lawrence Peake
Time
Slave
Dictatorship
Sun
Slaves
Paper
Circle
Second
Silver
Gilt
Hand
Sister
Fatuous
Upon
Curse
Knob
Speak
Circles
Knobs
Hands
Ridiculous
Overrated

More quotes by Mervyn Peake

Image
[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
Image
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
Image
I am too rich already, for my eyes Mint gold, while my heart cries.
Mervyn Peake
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Noon, ripe as thunder and silent as thought, had fled unfingered.
Mervyn Peake
Image
Something to remember, that: cats for missiles.
Mervyn Peake
Image
He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.
Mervyn Peake
Image
It was not certain what significance the ceremony held... but the formality was no less sacred for it being unintelligible
Mervyn Peake
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
For what use are books to anyone whose days are like a rook's nest with every twig a duty.
Mervyn Peake
Image
Cold love’s the loveliest love of all. So clear, so crisp, so empty. In short, so civilized.
Mervyn Peake
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Mount and begone. The world awaits you.
Mervyn Peake
Image
I am the wilderness lost in man.
Mervyn Peake
Image
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