The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

by Mervyn Peake

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.

when in those chloral hours before the dawn the laudanum built for him within his skull a tallow coloured world of ghastly beauty.