Susan Howatch Quotes

Redemption's just a word and as I'm not a Christian it means nothing to me.

But never mind, all the best heroines are beautiful orphans, abandoned to their fate, and the one thing that's certain about my situation is that I'm going to be a heroine when I grow up.
Can I be a hero?
Well, I suppose you can try. But you'll have to try very hard.

... 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.

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

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

Again, be patient. And have courage. Remember, everything passes, even the most unspeakable horrors.

The English don't have opinions about the Irish. They have prejudices.

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.

Ghosts, unshriven souls, psychological hang-ups — they all exist in the mind to put people through hell — they're just different ways [...] of looking at a given situation.

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

A rational disposition must necessarily preclude a romantic outlook in life, and only the failures of this world can afford to dispense with a rational disposition.

He wasn't just being selfish, he was being realistic. Marriage would have been very difficult if not downright impossible.

Death had won my three friends; Death had almost won me. But now I was the one who was going to win and I was going to win by outwitting Death over and over again ... To compete with Death, as I had discovered in the mountains, was to know one was alive.