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1 " The rules that apply to line on dry land no longer apply. You're immersed in water, a substance which has the potential to drown you. If you're not accustomed to swimming every instinct tells you to yell in terror and grab the rail at hte side of the pool, but in fact this isn't the way to deal with the problem. You have to make the problem no longer a problem by embracing it--you have to let go of the rail and launch yourself out on the water because once you're swimming...you find the water's stimulating, bracing, even welcoming. So by embracing the chaos instead of shunning it you've opened up a whole new dimension of reality. Father Lewis Hall "
― Susan Howatch , The High Flyer
2 " You've asked enough questions about evil. But you never asked once about love."So I asked him to tell me about it, but of course his definition lay beyond words. He just went on sitting with me in the dark and taking the weight of my pain. "
3 " The trouble was that I could not now think of my marriage without being assaulted by a wave of unbearable emotions which I felt quite unable to handle. Rage that Kim should have been deceiving me on such a huge scale, coupled with horror at his disastrous involvement with Mrs. Mayfield, were followed by grief that my love had apparently been a grand illusion, coupled with a violent, unforgiving self-disgust that I should have made such a devastating mess of my personal life … "
4 " Nobody suggested that it was my moral duty to visit my husband. Nobody talked about my moral responsibilities as a wife. But Val kept in touch with the doctors at the hospital, Nicholas kept in touch with the senior chaplain there, and now Lewis was talking of keeping in touch with Kim himself. The more I tried to escape from the reality of my shattered marriage, the more my new companions seemed to be quietly drawing my attention back to the husband I was unable to confront. "