Susan Howatch Quotes

... we have to be kind, we have to be charitable and we can't condemn people just because they get in a mess...even the best people can get into ghastly messes,...we must never judge other people too harshly because although they can make awful mistakes they can still be very nice people.

Acquiring carnal knowledge is like swimming in the sea ... The sea's so beautiful to look at, so wonderful to swim in, but you must never bathe unless it's safe. People so often drown in the sea and some coasts are so very dangerous, ... like the Coast of Gower.

True doppelgängers should never meet face-to-face, you know.

What a bloody jungle income tax is! It's a wonder we don't all go on strike and refuse to pay.

I deserve to be thought a coward. I am a coward. I'm just so bloody afraid of dying — of losing —

One must be rational about such matters and being rational need not mean being cold.

Recovering from an ill-starred romance is, after all, to anyone of sufficient will-power and self-respect, purely an attitude of mind.

Barbarity's everywhere, that's the truth of it. Absolutely anyone is capable of absolutely anything.
My dear Papa, I had no idea you were such a cynic!
That's not cynicism, that's honesty — as you well know, dealing with criminals as you do, seeing the human race continually at its worst.

Every woman needs a special friend of her own sex with whom she can 'have a haircombing' about everything from menstruation to male monsters, and Julie had become that kind of special friend.

I could always walk out on a husband. But I could never turn my back on a friend.

Little girls don't stay playmates. Little girls become big girls and big girls become sweethearts.

Distrust grows out of lies. Wrong-doing grows out of distrust. Tragedy grows out of wrong-doing. But out of honesty grows love and love's so powerful, it'll be like a suit of armour, protecting Robert, protecting you.

Christ, all you psychiatrists think about is sex — sex, sex, sex, sex, sex ...

Romance is the opiate of the dissatisfied, it anaesthesises them from the pain of their disordered second-rate lives [...] If romance is the opiate of the dissatisfied then surely nostalgia is the opiate of the disillusioned, for those who see all their dreams come true and find themselves living in a nightmare.

Success on that scale don't make for happiness. Look at Asquith. Why does he drink? I wouldn't want you to end up a drunkard like that.