There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humor. It is naked noise and naked malice.
Mervyn Peake
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
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.