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78e26ef
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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?
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metaphor
simile
rain
copy
mimic
shakespearean
poetic
fall
wind
cry
crying
despair
wit
howl
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Mervyn Peake |
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418ac4b
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Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.
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loneliness
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Mervyn Peake |
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674fcef
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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.
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Mervyn Peake |
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670b7b9
|
This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.
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owl
tower
purple
ruin
gothic
description
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Mervyn Peake |
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ad815ae
|
To live at all is miracle enough.
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miracle
living
miracles
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Mervyn Peake |
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bb6dc9c
|
Why break the heart that never beat from love?
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love
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Mervyn Peake |
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77d7a40
|
Oh how I hate people!
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Mervyn Peake |
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cca5366
|
I am clever enough to know that I am clever.
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Mervyn Peake |
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3c25eda
|
I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am; Maelstrom of passions in that hidden sea Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me; And in small compass the dark waters cram. -
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passion
philosophy
sea
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Mervyn Peake |
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87833df
|
There 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 a woman for their world. For the world of their center where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame. The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with ev..
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Mervyn Peake |
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dd83c9e
|
For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.
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life
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Mervyn Peake |
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143d131
|
Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia.
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funny
living
life-lessons
life
fleet
onomatopoeia
out-of-context
gormenghast
witty
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Mervyn Peake |
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abdf269
|
He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt.
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independence
revolt
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Mervyn Peake |
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63019c2
|
If ever he had harboured a conscience in his tough narrow breast he had by now dug out and flung away the awkward thing - flung it so far away that were he ever to need it again he could never find it. High-shouldered to a degree little short of malformation, slender and adroit of limb and frame, his eyes close-set and the colour of dried blood, he is climbing the spiral staircase of the soul of Gormenghast, bound for some pinnacle of the i..
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Mervyn Peake |
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b42091d
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Something to remember, that: cats for missiles.
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Mervyn Peake |
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785cf11
|
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. They sprawled over the sloping arch, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, ..
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Mervyn Peake |
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b752ffd
|
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.
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anger
gothic
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Mervyn Peake |
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905162e
|
It was not certain what significance the ceremony held... but the formality was no less sacred for it being unintelligible
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Mervyn Peake |
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1204537
|
Cold love's the loveliest love of all. So clear, so crisp, so empty. In short, so civilized.
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Mervyn Peake |
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690f860
|
When he at least reached the door the handle had cease to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to his knees he placed his head and the vagaries of his left eye (which was for ever trying to dash up and down the vertical surface of the door), he was able by dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed eye, an eye which was not his, being not only of a different colour to his own iron marble, but being, which is more co..
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Mervyn Peake |
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e1d7f8f
|
Swelter's eyes meet those of his enemy, and never has there held between four globes of gristle so sinister a hell of hatred. Had the flesh, the fibres, and the bones of the chef and those of Mr Flay been conjured away and away down that dark corridor leaving only their four eyes suspended in mid-air outside the Earl's door, then, surely, they must have reddened to the hue of Mars, reddened and smouldered, and at last broken into flame, so ..
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Mervyn Peake |
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409fc9a
|
There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe.
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Mervyn Peake |
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4624b45
|
I sometimes think about old tombs and weeds That interwreathe among the bones of kings With cold and poisonous berry and black flower: Or ruminate upon the skulls of steeds Frailer than shells and on those luminous wings - The shoulder blades of Princes of fled power, Which now the unrecorded sandstorms grind Into so wraith-like a translucency Of tissue-thin and aqueous bone -
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skeleton
transience
melancholy
remembrance
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Mervyn Peake |
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5f1cd7e
|
Yet not with all of me am I in love. Too much of my own quietness is with me.
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Mervyn Peake |
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42b26c1
|
For what use are books to anyone whose days are like a rook's nest with every twig a duty.
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Mervyn Peake |
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dffafab
|
Linger now with me, thou Beauty, On the sharp archaic shore. Surely 'tis a wastrel's duty And the gods could ask no more. If thou lingerest when I linger, If thou tread'st the stones I tread, Thou wilt stay my spirit's hunger And dispel the dreams I dread. Come thou, love, my own, my only, Through the battlements of Groan; Lingering becomes so lonely When one lingers on one's own. I have lingered in the cloisters Of the Norther..
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Mervyn Peake |
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b722bb8
|
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.
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independence
revolution
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Mervyn Peake |
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df1db13
|
He is climbing the spiral staircase of the soul of Gormenghast, bound for some pinnacle of the itching fancy - some wild, invulnerable eyrie best known to himself; where he can watch the world spread out below him, and shake exultantly his clotted wings.
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matrimonio
|
Mervyn Peake |
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819ad6d
|
And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and it is spring again and yet again and the small streams that run over the rough sides of Gormenghast Mountain are big with rain while the days lengthen and summer sprawls across the countryside, sprawls in all the swathes of its green, with its gold and sticky head, with its slumber and the drone of doves and with its butterflies and its lizards..
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Mervyn Peake |
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6454f92
|
Mount and begone. The world awaits you.
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Mervyn Peake |
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bd18fb3
|
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.
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Mervyn Peake |
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b36dbdd
|
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.
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Mervyn Peake |
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51ef488
|
I am too rich already, for my eyes mint gold. -
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wealth
beauty-in-nature
gold
riches
eyes
|
Mervyn Peake |
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1933dc2
|
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.
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Mervyn Peake |
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4c364c2
|
If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by chalk-white walls -
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death
belsen
wwii
disease
guilt
|
Mervyn Peake |
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0e5dc5c
|
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.
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Mervyn Peake |
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bf6bebb
|
She feels a splash of water on her hand and, turning, sees that the sky has become overcast with a blanket of ominous dark rose-colored cloud, and of a sudden the light fades from the lawn and the cedars. Steerpike, who is on his way back to the Earl's bedroom, stops a moment at a staircase window to see the first decent of the rain. It is falling from the sky in long, upright, and seemingly motionless lines of rosy silver that stand rigidl..
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Mervyn Peake |
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56ca551
|
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.
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Mervyn Peake |
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715c532
|
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.
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steerpike
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Mervyn Peake |
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60ea18e
|
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...
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bones
lamb
feast
crown
hearts
poison
|
Mervyn Peake |
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6738368
|
Noon, ripe as thunder and silent as thought, had fled unfingered.
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passing-of-time
|
Mervyn Peake |
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ae24364
|
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.
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women
pastels
colors
safety
|
Mervyn Peake |
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d0afe3f
|
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?
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Mervyn Peake |
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2f9f0c9
|
Are you lishening, my pretty vermin, are you lishening?
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|
Mervyn Peake |