Sexual desire has to be dead as a doornail before a man and a woman can be genuinely at peace in a platonic… — Susan Howatch

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.

'To be distracted is pardonable. To be incoherent is simply unobliging.'

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