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
Related She told herself there had been nothing outside, nothing peering in at her from the darkness. ... CLARA DIANE THOMPSON It was as bad as the summer that her mother had taken the training wheels off Coraline's bicycle;but... NEIL GAIMAN Suddenly, everything was beautiful. The way she viewed the world was nothing more but a reflection o... ROBERT M. DRAKE It was a long head. It was a wedge, a sliver, a grotesque slice in which it seemed the fe... MERVYN PEAKE The prosecutors had nothing, nothing, nothing. Everything was hearsay. GLORIA MENZIES She had an amazing sensitivity, which expressed herself in artistic talents. She was a wonderful art... FLORENCE TREISTMAN It all fell away then – the control, the independence . . . everything. She had known it would nev... UMAIR NAEEM She knew nothing but she had everything he had lost. OSCAR WILDE Lucy seemed to be imprisoned by a legion of people in her life who always wanted what was right for ... C. JOYBELL C. Oh yeah. It was a little black gun she had in her hand. I saw that. Just as clear as can be. And she... BARB BRUSSEAU ...though she had not had the strength to shake off the spell that bound her to him she had lost all... EDITH WHARTON That initial anger she had felt turned to sadness, and now it had become something else, almost a du... NICHOLAS SPARKS His attentive treatment of her had nothing to do with the presumption that she was weak, and everyth... ANGELA N. BLOUNT She lived by herself and all she had was her Social Security. She made all the beads herself. DEBBIE DOOL As her feet beat the concrete ground beneath them, her chest began to ache. It had been a long time ... ROSS CALIGIURI She was told nothing can be done because she still had contact with him. MARC LANOIS Now very much against her will, she thought of the way Jace had looked at her then, the blaze of fai... CASSANDRA CLARE It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, but is ru... JOHN DRYDEN She was nothing in particular. But at least she had a purpose. SCOTT WESTERFELD Because with Charlie, nothing was ever easy. Everything was windswept and octagonal and finger-combe... A.S. KING I sat there with everything - and I had nothing. DAVID MILLAR ….Nothing was inevitable. She had not chosen this way. It was her fate. It had been decided since ... LAURIE MATTHEW For a gymnast to be successful, she needs to strike a balance of everything within herself. She need... YANA KUDRYAVTSEVA It was more for the safety of herself given the nature of her behavior. She wasn't threatening peopl... RANDY DEGASPERIN Tears streamed down her wrinkled face. This world that she had longed to change for the better was a... GARY INBINDER Because he had nothing to hide, he did perhaps appear to have forfeited a little of his strength. Bu... PATRICK WHITE Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did... LEO TOLSTOY She had learnt many things since the days of her first rebellion, and she knew now that this matter ... H.G. WELLS When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, more... GUSTAVE FLAUBERT These kisses... they were confessions. Tastes of everything she had stored inside her. Everything sh... TESSA DARE Now that she had nothing to lose, she was free. PAULO COELHO The feeling that she had never really lived in this world caught her by surprise. It was a fact. She... HAN KANG She imagined herself both queen and slave, dominatrix and victim. In her imagination she was making ... PAULO COELHO But how could she tell him that the reason she always acted so disinterested in everything was becau... JENNIFER E. SMITH I closed my eyes, but that didn't blur the images his words had evoked. "Oh, God," I murmured. ... JEANNETTE DE BEAUVOIR A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of he... JOHN BERGER There was only one hope she didn't and wouldn't allow herself to hold on to: that if, in almost thir... INGEBORG BACHMANN We had nothing left. As a team they gave everything they had yesterday to get here. JOELEEN AKIN although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did ... E. LOCKHART She could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay, rather, the least approach of sadness would ... GEORGE MACDONALD It is madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because by herself she is nothing and is ruled... JOHN DRYDEN To the customer, it means absolutely nothing. These are teething pains. ... This had nothing to do w... CHARLES SEATON Margarita was never short of money. She could buy whatever she liked. Her husband had plenty of inte... MIKHAIL BULGAKOV To Cassidy, the panopticon wasn't a metaphor. It was the greatest failing on everything she was, a p... ROBYN SCHNEIDER The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. ALBERT EINSTEIN She has proven herself to be a likable and strong-willed woman. I am sure she will prove herself ver... DIANE ABBOTT She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ... J.D. SALINGER At the age of fifty-six Eleanor Stoddard was still a beautiful woman. She owned three hotels in Fran... BARBARA TAYLOR BRADFORD The common bees will never use their sting upon the queen; if she is to be disposed of, they starve ... JOHN BURROUGHS She had not wanted him to but had let him have his way because ever since she was a child she had ge... AMOS OZ Charles's conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, and everyone's ideas filed along it in their ordin... GUSTAVE FLAUBERT I was brought up among the sort of self-important women who had a husband as one has an alibi ANITA BROOKNER . . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, h... CHARLES DICKENS The car was on the FDR drive now and, turning her head, she glanced out at the bleak brown buildings... CANDACE BUSHNELL As long as she had books and money, nothing could be a catastrophe. KATARINA BIVALD Sissy had two great failings. She was a great lover and a great mother. She had so much of tendernes... BETTY SMITH We condemn all shades and hues of terrorism and militancy and want to cooperate with India to fight ... SHEHBAZ SHARIF She was a composer, carefully orchestrating how much of herself she let people see. Some thought the... LAUREN VALENCIA Consensus wisdom has it that all modern commercial fantasy novels fall into two camps: those derived... PAUL DI FILIPPO Everything- everything was for Dorian, for his friend. For himself, he had nothing left to lose. He ... SARAH J. MAAS Nothing was a natural predator of productive fiction writing like the cell phone. Ditto the laptop. ... ELIN HILDERBRAND When she came to her senses again she cut off all contact with him. It had not been easy, but she ha... STIEG LARSSON She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency in life--this instantaneous tu... GUSTAVE FLAUBERT Edna Lewis had the hands and soul of a great artist, and like all great artists, she had something o... ALICE WATERS She had a theory that the fear of getting in trouble was what made her not as good a programmer and ... MAUREEN F. MCHUGH She probably had all the time in the world, Therese thought, probably did nothing all day but what s... PATRICIA HIGHSMITH Nothing," she said softly. "A queen must possess nothing to rule because she has to give everything ... RICHELLE MEAD I was quite taken with her, because I'd never seen the African influence in dance with that kind of ... HARRY BELAFONTE She had given him all she had - but what was it compared to the other gifts life held for him? She u... EDITH WHARTON She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet str... ANN BRASHARES The sculptor will chip off all unnecessary material to set free the angel. Nature will chip and poun... ORISON SWETT MARDEN She tried to worry that something terrible had happened to him, but didn't believe it for a moment. ... DOUGLAS ADAMS I hear nothing. I hear nothing, but what does it mean that I hear nothing? I walk in the cemeteries ... ANNE RICE It was ironic, but when you scratched the surface, most successful men were working for one thing on... CANDACE BUSHNELL The Nothing is spreading," groaned the first. "It's growing and growing, there's more of it every da... MICHAEL ENDE There was nothing we could do. The girl had a nice shot. She deserved it. DEMIR MUFTARI She even had a kind of special position among men: she was an exception, she fitted none of the cate... MARGARET ATWOOD Madam, you have bereft me of all words.
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins,
And there is ... WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE My daughter had carried within her a story that kept hurting her: Her dad abandoned her. She started... REGINA BRETT For the first time, she recognized the symptoms of infatuation which she had felt incipiently as a c... KATE CHOPIN You can give away parts of your soul to loving, but you must always reserve part of your soul for yo... KATIE MISHRA I had a date with a girl I called 'the parrot.' All she did was repeat everything I said. Sh... JUSTIN CHON They had nothing to ask, because we had it all covered. We did our homework. DENNIS LATTA The 1950s felt so safe and smug, the '60s so raw and raucous, the revolutions stacked one on top... NANCY GIBBS Forget the girl who had everything. She died when her father did." "But I--" "Nothing is w... JAY KRISTOFF He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. ... PHILIPPA GREGORY She gave the impression that she had somehow slipped off her leash. As though she was taking herself... ARUNDHATI ROY The sheer poverty was like nothing else we had ever seen before. It was to the point where people di... CHRIS LANE She had to fight to the death all the way to the line. It was something else. She ran with everythin... HEATHER QUARANTILLO and tell me you love me, come back and haunt me oh and I rush to the start..running in circles, chas... COLDPLAY Of all the women he knew, she had meant the most; and was the one person in his life he felt he had ... LARRY MCMURTRY A man drank and became drunk, next he said, now i am delivered from my enemies and then walked into ... SOTONYE ANGA She had a lot of goals she put herself to. She always met them. JUDITH TERRAZAS I thought that nothing enormously bad or good had happened to me during my life. All the normal thin... MICHAEL ZADOORIAN She was nothing but a woman who put other people in front of herself. She cared so much about her ki... NICOLE BROWN You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part. HENRY JAMES It was mild monsters like these that made Jack the Ripper go after young women, she decided: who cou... GREGORY MAGUIRE Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live, and she was always... PAULO COELHO Perhaps she would not have thought of wickedness as a state so rare, so abnormal, so exotic, one whi... MARCEL PROUST His sister liked to think of herself as Lord Tywin with teats, but she was wrong. Their father had b... GEORGE R.R. MARTIN
More Mervyn Peake
Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia. MERVYN PEAKE There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screa... MERVYN PEAKE Each day I live in a glass room unless I break it with the thrusting of my senses and pass through t... MERVYN PEAKE I am clever enough to know that I am clever. MERVYN PEAKE Take him away. Prepare a feast. Forget nothing. My crown: the golden cutlery. The poison bottles; an... MERVYN PEAKE This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of k... MERVYN PEAKE What is Time... That you speak of it so subserviently? Are we to be the slaves of the sun, that seco... MERVYN PEAKE In great thick dusty books he read And hardly ever went to bed Before it was eleven. ... MERVYN PEAKE If seeing her an hour before her last Weak cough into all blackness I could yet Be held by... MERVYN PEAKE Civilized people don't feel . MERVYN PEAKE And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling fro... MERVYN PEAKE So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage. So limp of body that th... MERVYN PEAKE I am too rich already, for my eyes mint gold. - Coloured Money MERVYN PEAKE The crags of the mountain were ruthless in the moon; cold, deadly and shining. Distance had no meani... MERVYN PEAKE He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt. MERVYN PEAKE And a ton came down on a coloured road, And a ton came down on a gaol, And a ton came down... MERVYN PEAKE As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivio... MERVYN PEAKE Bellgrove, eminently lovable, because of his individual weakness, his incompetence, his failure as a... MERVYN PEAKE To live at all is miracle enough. MERVYN PEAKE Hold fast To the law Of the last Cold tome, Where the earth Of the truth MERVYN PEAKE ...she stepped outwards into the dim atmosphere, and falling, was most fabulously lit by the moon an... MERVYN PEAKE It was a long head. It was a wedge, a sliver, a grotesque slice in which it seemed the fe... MERVYN PEAKE But Fuchsia might as well have been carved from dark marble. Only her tears moved. MERVYN PEAKE Gormenghast. Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the... MERVYN PEAKE He had no longer any need for home, for he carried his Gormenghast within him. All that he sought wa... MERVYN PEAKE She could feel the blood flowing within her and she felt that she must die or break forth into leave... MERVYN PEAKE Are you lishening, my pretty vermin, are you lishening? MERVYN PEAKE Years on end, and swords on end - where will it end, if our ears unbend - what shall I spend on a wr... MERVYN PEAKE Linger now with me, thou Beauty, On the sharp archaic shore. Surely 'tis a wastrel's dut... MERVYN PEAKE I shall live alone. Always alone. In a house or a tree.' Fuchsia started to chew at a fre... MERVYN PEAKE The moon slid inexorably into its zenith, the shadows shrivelling to the feet of all that cast them,... MERVYN PEAKE The crumbling castle, looming among the mists, exhaled the season, and every cold stone breathed it ... MERVYN PEAKE And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself will cry for insurrection! For tomor... MERVYN PEAKE Mount and begone. The world awaits you. MERVYN PEAKE Seeing an Earl as an owl on a mantelpiece, and having part of one's face removed by a cat, both on t... MERVYN PEAKE Swelter's eyes meet those of his enemy, and never has there held between four globes of gristle so s... MERVYN PEAKE Yet not with all of me am I in love. Too much of my own quietness is with me. MERVYN PEAKE For what use are books to anyone whose days are like a rook's nest with every twig a duty. MERVYN PEAKE It was not certain what significance the ceremony held... but the formality was no less sacred for i... MERVYN PEAKE In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous s... MERVYN PEAKE When he at least reached the door the handle had cease to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to his ... MERVYN PEAKE His was not the hatred that arises suddenly like a storm and as suddenly abates. It was, once the in... MERVYN PEAKE Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a... MERVYN PEAKE There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It... MERVYN PEAKE Something to remember, that: cats for missiles. MERVYN PEAKE For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless. MERVYN PEAKE Oh how I hate people! MERVYN PEAKE Why break the heart that never beat from love? MERVYN PEAKE We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convict... MERVYN PEAKE I sometimes think about old tombs and weeds That interwreathe among the bones of kings Wit... MERVYN PEAKE That night, I hated father. He smelt of cabbage. There was cigarette ash all over his trousers. His ... MERVYN PEAKE my memories are made of scars and tattoos,they will last forever MERVYN We wanted to wear them down because we knew they had a long bus ride up here and I think that defini... ROY PEAKE Everybody goes through it. He carried us earlier in the season, and it's a good thing that he did. W... ROY PEAKE Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters -- because girls can read as well as boys -- r... MERVYN GRIFFITH-JONES A psychiatrist is a man who goes to the Folies-Berg?re and looks at the audience. BISHOP MERVYN STOCKWOOD When I was a graduate student at Harvard, I learned about showers and central heating. Ten years lat... MERVYN A. KING