The Illustrated Gormenghast Trilogy

by Mervyn Peake

the secret is to be able to freeze the outsider off completely and then he will be able to live within himself

As pirates in the hot brine-shallows wading, make, face to face, their comber-hindered lunges, sun-blind, fly-agonied, and browned with pearls, so here the timbers leaned, moonlight misled and the rank webs impeded.