Patricia Highsmith Quote
How about some perfume? Carol asked, moving toward her with the bottle. She touched Therese’s forehead with her fingers, at the hairline where she had kissed her that day.You remind me of the woman I once saw, Therese said, somewhere off Lexington. Not you but the light. She was combing her hair up. Therese stopped, but Carol waited for her to go on. Carol always waited, and she could never say exactly what she wanted to say. Early one morning when I was on the way to work, and I remember it was starting to rain, she floundered on. I saw her in a window. She really could not go on, about standing there for perhaps three or four minutes, wishing with an intensity that drained her strength that she knew the woman, that she might be welcome if she went to the house and knocked on the door, wishing she could do that instead of going on to her job at the Pelican Press.My little orphan, Carol said.Therese smiled. There was nothing dismal, no sting in the word when Carol said it.
How about some perfume? Carol asked, moving toward her with the bottle. She touched Therese’s forehead with her fingers, at the hairline where she had kissed her that day.You remind me of the woman I once saw, Therese said, somewhere off Lexington. Not you but the light. She was combing her hair up. Therese stopped, but Carol waited for her to go on. Carol always waited, and she could never say exactly what she wanted to say. Early one morning when I was on the way to work, and I remember it was starting to rain, she floundered on. I saw her in a window. She really could not go on, about standing there for perhaps three or four minutes, wishing with an intensity that drained her strength that she knew the woman, that she might be welcome if she went to the house and knocked on the door, wishing she could do that instead of going on to her job at the Pelican Press.My little orphan, Carol said.Therese smiled. There was nothing dismal, no sting in the word when Carol said it.
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About Patricia Highsmith
Her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), has been adapted for stage and screen, the best known being the 1951 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Her 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley has been adapted for film multiple times. Writing under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, Highsmith published The Price of Salt in 1952, the first lesbian novel with a "happy ending"; it was republished 38 years later as Carol under her own name and later adapted into a 2015 film.