Nelly, I am Heathcliff!—he’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.

Catherine Earnshaw tells her servant Nelly Dean why she cannot simply marry for comfort and forget Heathcliff. The speech is not about happiness: it describes a bond closer to identity than to affection, which is why the novel is so often read as a story about something other than romance.