Patricia Highsmith Quotes

And she did not have to ask if this was right, no one had to tell her, because this could not have been more right or perfect.

Her life was a series of zigzags. At nineteen, she was anxious.

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

Obsessions are the only things that matter.

Was it love or wasn't it that she felt for Carol? And how absurd it was that she didn't even know. She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they l...

She hated cleaning up after making something.

I read, write and create. I must lose myself in work, so that there is no space for the other/anything else.

It had all happened in that instant she had seen Carol standing in the middle of the floor, watching her. Then the realization that so much had happened after that meeting made her feel incredibly luc...

And when all's said and done, the final comment will be (from me at least) so what? I'll live with my neuroses. I'll try to develop patience, with my handicapped personality. But I prefer to live with...

I'd had a little feeling of destiny. Because, you see, what I mean about affinities is true from friendships down to even the accidental glance at someone on the street-there's always a definite reaso...

It shook Therese in the profoundest part of her where no words were, no easy words like death or dying or killing Those words were somehow future, and this was present. An inarticulate anxiety, a desi...

I'm not melancholic,' she protested, but the thin ice was under her feet again, the uncertainties. or was it that she always wanted a little more than she had, no matter how much she had?

I have been sadder than any man could be: for nothing in the world was made for me.

I tell him his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication.

I do not understand people who like to make noise; consequently I fear them, and since I fear them, I hate them.

Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.

Life is a long failure of understanding, a long, mistaken shutting of the heart.

One interesting thing is that a stage is reached when nothing hurts any more. Things cannot become any worse, finally, for the one who is really depressed.

one blow in anger [would] kill, probably, a child from aged two to eight. Those over eight would take two blows to kill.

The justice I have received, I shall give back.