Illustrators

"It was not certain what significance the ceremony held, for unfortunately the records were lost, but the formality was no less sacred for being unintelligible."

"Never having had either positive cruelty or kindness shown to her by her parents, but only an indifference, she was not conscious of what it was that she missed—affection."

"These days a passion to accumulate knowledge of any and every kind consumed him; but only as a means to an end. He must know all things, for only so might he have, when situations arose in the future, a full pack of cards to play from."

"He also knew when to stop. In the fine art of deceit and personal advancement as in any other calling this is the hallmark of the master."

"It was not possible for him to visit his library as often as he wished, for the calls made upon him by the endless ceremonials which were his exacting duty to perform robbed him for many hours each day of his only pleasure—books."

"Autumn returned to Gormenghast like a dark spirit re-entering its stronghold."

"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."

"This is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or of a woman for their world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame."

"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."

"This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven."

"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 its outer walls."

"To live at all is miracle enough."

"Leave the stronger and the lesser things to me! Lest that conger named Vanessa who is longer than a dresser visits thee."

"When Uncle Jake Became a snake He never found it out; And so as no one mentions it One sees him still about."

"It's not their fault if, in the heat Of their transactions, I repeat It's not their fault if vampires meet And gurgle in their spats."

"I saw all of a sudden No sign of any ship."

"O'er seas that have no beaches To end their waves upon, I floated with twelve peaches, A sofa and a swan."

"But we have seen it in the air, A fairy like a William Pear"

"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."

"My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses."

"They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone. They don't have to be seen while sailing on."

"I'd have to be really quick to describe clouds — a split second's enough for them to start being something else. Their trademark: they don't repeat a single shape, shade, pose, arrangement."

"The counting of weekdays would inevitably seem to be a senseless activity; dropping letters in the mailbox a whim of foolish youth; the sign "No Walking On The Grass" a symptom of lunacy."

"For the sake of research, the big picture and definitive conclusions, one would have to transcend time, in which everything scurries and whirls."

"We're extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself."

"Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan. I'm drowning in debts up to my ears. I'll have to pay for myself with my self, give up my life for my life."

"If there are angels they must, I hope, find this convincing, this merriment dangling from terror, not even crying Save me Save me since all of this takes place in silence."

"I shake my memory. Maybe something in its branches that has been asleep for years will start up with a flutter.No. Clearly I'm asking too much. Nothing less than one whole second."

"Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared."

"Those who knew what this was all about must make way for those who know little. And less than that. And at last nothing less than nothing."

"After every war someone has to tidy up. Things won't pick themselves up, after all.Someone has to shove the rubble to the roadsides so the carts loaded with corpses can get by."

"It's shocking, the positions, the unchecked simplicity with which one mind contrives to fertilize another! Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know."

"There's nothing more debauched than thinking."

"God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men."

"And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe? That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers' little boy!"

"Few of them made it to thirty. Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees. Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow. One had to hurry, to get on with life before the sun went down, before the first snow."

"He managed to come into the world at what was still a fitting time. All that was to pass passed in this house. Not in housing projects, not in furnished but empty quarters, among unknown neighbors on fifteenth floors that student field trips rarely reach."

"There's no life that couldn't be immortal if only for a moment.Death always arrives by that very moment too late.In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door. As far as you've come can't be undone."

"The window has a wonderful view of a lake, but the view doesn't view itself. It exists in this world colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless."

"We call it a grain of sand but it calls itself neither grain nor sand. It does just fine without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect or apt."

"Show me your little poem and I'll tell you why it wasn't written any earlier or later than it was.Oh no, you've got me wrong. Keep your funny piece of paper with its scribbles. All I need for my ends is your layer of dirt and the long gone smell of burning."

"Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light."

"Millennia have passed since you first called me archaeology. I no longer require your stone gods, your ruins with legible inscriptions. Show me your whatever and I'll tell you who you were."

"On this third planet from the sun among the signs of bestiality a clear conscience is Number One."

"The going's rough, and so we need the laugh of bright incisors, molars of goodwill. Our times are still not safe and sane enough for faces to show ordinary sorrow."

"I felt age within me. Distance. The futility of wandering. Torpor. I looked back setting my bundle down. I looked back not knowing where to set my foot. Serpents appeared on my path, spiders, field mice, baby vultures. They were neither good nor evil now — every living thing was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic."

"And how can we talk of order overall when the very placement of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting! And dust blowing all over the steppes as if they hadn't been partitioned! And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves, that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters! Only what is human can truly be foreign."

"My dreams — even they're not as populous as they should be. They hold more solitude than noisy crowds."

"I know I won't be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way. Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light."

"My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs. My apologies to great questions for small answers."