[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.

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.

To live at all is miracle enough.

There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe.

There is a brotherhood among the kindly- Closer and defter and more integral- Than any of aisle or coven- For love rang out before the chapel bell

Yet not with all of me am I in love. Too much of my own quietness is with me.

Oh how I hate people!

For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.

Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia.

Lingering is so very lonely when one lingers all alone.

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?

Isn't it queer that the things we writhe over at night are seldom wicked things? Just humiliating ones.

If this inner and critical voice has kept you safe for many years as your inner voice of authority, you may end up not being able to hear the real voice of God.

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.

My life changed the day I walked across that stage. Because I finally finished something!

Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes.

Live free or die. Four words. Thirteen letters. Ridges, bumps, swirls under my fingertips. Another story. We cling tightly to it, and our belief turns it to truth.

Search men's governing principles, and consider the wise, what they shun and what they cleave to.

Every day is a reminder to accept myself as I am.

Is this a vision? Is this a dream? Do I sleep?

I see every chance of a long, confused and disorganizing civil war, and I feel no desire to take a hand therein.