Patricia Highsmith Quotes & Sayings

She was conscious of the moments passing like irrevocable time, irrevocable happiness, for in these last seconds she might turn and see the face she would never see again. — Patricia Highsmith

Caviar. How very nice of them," Carol said, looking inside a sandwich. "Do you like caviar?" "No. I wish I did." "Why?" Therese watched Carol take a small bite of the sandwich from which she had removed the top slice of bread, a bit where the most caviar was. "Because people always like caviar so much when they do like it," Therese said. Carol smiled, and went on nibbling, slowly. "It's an acquired taste. Acquired tastes are always more pleasant--an hard to get rid of. — Patricia Highsmith

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 lucky suddenly. It was so easy for a man and woman to find each other, to find someone who would do, but for her to have found Carol- — Patricia Highsmith

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

Mr Greenleaf was such a decent fellow himself, he took it for granted that everybody else in the world was decent, too. Tom had almost forgotten such people existed. — Patricia Highsmith

For the hundredth time, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror, patiently touched every scratch with the styptic pencil, and repowdered them. He ministered to his face and hands objectively, as if they were not a part of himself. When his eyes met the staring eyes in the mirror, they slipped away as they must have slipped away, Guy thought, that first afternoon on the train, when he had tried to avoid Bruno's eyes. — Patricia Highsmith

If you wanted to be cheerful, or melancholic, or wistful , or thoughtful, or courteous, you simply had to act those things with every gesture. — Patricia Highsmith

Therese had read about that special pleasure people got from the fact that someone they loved was attractive in the eyes of other people, too. She simply didn't have it. — Patricia Highsmith

Vic kept looking at Wilson's wagging jaw and thinking of the multitude of people like him on earth, perhaps half the people on earth were of his type, or potentially his type, and thinking that it was not bad at all to be leaving them. The ugly birds without wings. The mediocre who perpetuated mediocrity, who really fought and died for it. He smiled at Wilson's grim, resentful, the-world-owes-me-a-living face, which was the reflection of the small mind behind it, and Vic cursed it and all it stood for. Silently, and with a smile, and with all that was left of him, he cursed it. — Patricia Highsmith

I like to work for four or five hours a day. I aim for seven days a week. — Patricia Highsmith

I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy, and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine. — Patricia Highsmith

Look at it, like a rat,' she said. 'A portrait of Harge. — Patricia Highsmith

I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches. — Patricia Highsmith

And wished with all her power to wish anything, that the woman would simply continue her last words and say, "Are you really so glad to have met me? Then why can't we see each other again? Why can't we even have lunch together today?" Her voice was so casual, and she might have said it so easily. — Patricia Highsmith

A rush of panic comforted him with its familiarity. — Patricia Highsmith

Why should Dickie want to come back to subways and taxis and starched collars and a nine-to- five job? Or even a chauffeured car and vacations in Florida and Maine? It wasn't as much fun as sailing a boat in old clothes and being answerable to nobody for the way — Patricia Highsmith

Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing. — Patricia Highsmith

Ripley is married. And he's not lost. He has his feet on the ground. — Patricia Highsmith

They were not friends. They didn't know each other. It struck Tom like a horrible truth, true for all time, true for the people he had known in the past and for those he would know in the future: each had stood and would stand before him, and he would know time and time again that he would never know them, and the worst was that there would always be the illusion, for a time, that he did know them, and that he and they were completely in harmony and alike. For an instant the wordless shock of his realization seemed more than he could bear. — Patricia Highsmith

They roared into the Lincoln Tunnel. A wild, inexplicable excitement mounted in Therese as she stared through the windshield. She wished the tunnel might cave in and kill them both, that their bodies might be dragged out together. She felt Carol glancing at her from time to time. — Patricia Highsmith

Our actions and responsibilities are our own; what later returns to either haunt or applaud us is neither possible to predict nor always completely understandable. — Patricia Highsmith

What could be duller than past history!' Therese said, smiling. 'Maybe futures that won't have any history. — Patricia Highsmith

He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere. — Patricia Highsmith

The law was not society, it began. Society was people like himself and Owen and Brillhart, who hadn't the right to take the life of another member of society. And yet the law did. "And yet the law is supposed to be the will of society at least. It isn't even that. Or maybe it is collectively," he added, aware that as always he was doubling back before he come to a point, making things as complex as possible in trying to make them certain. — Patricia Highsmith

Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to offer her except the history of weakness, loneliness, and inadequacy, the decline and fall of himself? He himself was the core of the loneliness around him, and its core was inadequacy. He was inadequate even in love. — Patricia Highsmith

And the hopelessness of herself, of ever being the person she wanted to be and of doing the things that person would do. Had all her life been nothing but a dream, and was this real? — Patricia Highsmith

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. — Patricia Highsmith

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

Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her. — Patricia Highsmith

And no book, and possibly no painting, when it is finished, is ever exactly like the first dream of it. — Patricia Highsmith

What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them? — Patricia Highsmith

Everything human is alien to me. — Patricia Highsmith

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 desire to know, know anything for certain, had jammed itself in her throat for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe. — Patricia Highsmith

She's everything that should be loathed," he went on, staring in front of him. "Sometimes I think I hate everything in the world. No decency, no conscience. She's what people mean when they say America never grows up, America rewards the corrupt. She's the type who goes to the bad movies, acts in them, reads the love-story magazines, lives in a bungalow, and whips her husband into earning more money this year so they can buy on the installment plan next year, breaks up her neighbor's marriage - — Patricia Highsmith

But when they kissed goodnight in bed, Therese felt their sudden release, that leap of response in both of them, as if their bodies were of some materials which put together inevitably created desire. — Patricia Highsmith

How was it possible to be afraid and in love ... The two things did not go together. How was it possible to be afraid, when the two of them grew stronger together every day? And every night. Every night was different, and every morning. Together they possessed a miracle. — Patricia Highsmith

Happiness was a little like flying, she thought, like being a kite. It depended on how much one let the string out. — Patricia Highsmith

She hated cleaning up after making something. — Patricia Highsmith

When she stood up, the woman was looking at her with the calm gray eyes that Therese could neither quite face nor look away from. — Patricia Highsmith

Honestly, I don't understand why people get so worked up about a little murder! — Patricia Highsmith

I should love to do a novel, about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself. — Patricia Highsmith

He did look like an Italian of the worse type, though Vic didn't think he was, and it was an insult to the Italian race to assume that he was. He resembled no particular race, only an amalgamation of the worst elements of various Latin peoples. He looked as if he had spent all his life dodging blows that were probably aimed at him for good reason. — Patricia Highsmith

She envied him. She envied him his faith there would always be a place, a home, a job, someone else for him. She envied him that attitude. — Patricia Highsmith

Robert Walker as Bruno was excellent. He had elegance and humor, and the proper fondness for his mother. — Patricia Highsmith

Did the world always mete out just deserts? — Patricia Highsmith

How easy it was to lie when one had to lie! — Patricia Highsmith

He robs everyone — Patricia Highsmith

Carol raised her hand slowly and brushed her hair back, once on either side, and Therese smiled because the gesture was Carol, and it was Carol she loved and would always love. Oh, in a different way now because she was a different person, and it was like meeting Carol all over again, but it was still Carol and no one else. It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell. Therese waited. Then as she was about to go to her, Carol saw her, seemed to stare at her incredulously a moment while Therese watched the slow smile growing, before her arm lifted suddenly, her hand waved a quick, eager greeting that Therese had never seen before. Therese walked toward her. — Patricia Highsmith

Carol looked at her. "How do you become a poet?"
"By feeling things - too much, I suppose," Therese answered conscientiously. — Patricia Highsmith

It was the seventh or eighth floor, she couldn't remember which. A streetcar crawled past the front of the hotel, and people on the sidewalk moved in every direction, with legs on either side of them, and it crossed her mind to jump. — Patricia Highsmith

What immense satisfaction it must be to fashion a story like [Maupassant's]! One must say 'fashion' because it is not merely writing, but massing and cutting away like a sculptor, chiseling lean and clear. And to put one's work confidently in the crucible of Time; to know that in six perfect pages is the finest form of one's idea: This satisfaction is the only true reward of the artist, and this his highest possible joy on Earth. — Patricia Highsmith

My angel," Carold said. "Flung out of space. — Patricia Highsmith

But there were too many points at which the other self could invade the self he wanted to preserve, and there were too many forms of invasion: certain words, sounds, lights, actions his hands or feet performed, and if he did nothing at all, heard and saw nothing, the shouting of some triumphant inner voice that shocked him and cowed him. — Patricia Highsmith

Though all we have known is only a beginning. — Patricia Highsmith

I have a definite psychosis in being with people. I cannot bear it very long. — Patricia Highsmith

Odd, Tom thought, that some girls meant sadness and death. Some girls looked like sunlight, creativity, joy, but they really meant death, and not even because the girls were enticing their victims, in fact one might blame the boys for being deceived by - nothing at all, simply imagination. — Patricia Highsmith

Do people always fall in love with things they can't have?'
'Always,' Carol said, smiling, too. — Patricia Highsmith

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. — Patricia Highsmith

Therese could not think of a single question that would be proper to ask, because all her questions were so enormous. — Patricia Highsmith

At any rate, Therese thought, she was happier than she ever had been before. And why worry about defining everything? — Patricia Highsmith

I hated cracking the whip, and these juries turn into political things. — Patricia Highsmith

the rapport between two men or two women can be absolute and perfect, as it can never be between man and woman, and perhaps some people want just this, as others want that more shifting and uncertain thing that happens between men and women. — Patricia Highsmith

Therese leaned closer toward it, looking down at her glass. She wanted to thrust the table aside and spring into her arms, to bury her nose in the green and gold scarf that was tied close about her neck. Once the backs of their hands brushed on the table, and Therese's skin there felt separately alive now, and rather burning. — Patricia Highsmith

Once a person has become detached from his possessions, his customary duties, his moments of solitude, where is he? What is he? — Patricia Highsmith

January. It was all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory: [ ... ]Every human action seemed to yield a magic. January was a two-faced month, jangling like jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define. — Patricia Highsmith

Nothing was true but the fatigue of life and the eternal disappointment. — Patricia Highsmith

I don't set the alarm to get up. I get up when I feel like it. — Patricia Highsmith

The taste of Scotch, though Guy didn't much care for it, was pleasant because it reminded him of Anne. She drank Scotch, when she drank. It was like her, golden, full of light, made with careful art. — Patricia Highsmith

The dusky and faintly sweet smell of her perfume came to Therese again, a smell suggestive of dark green silk, that was hers alone, like the smell of a special flower. — Patricia Highsmith

I know that Southern redhead type, Bruno said, poking at his apple pie. — Patricia Highsmith

Tom laughed at the phrase "sexual deviation." Where was the sex? Where was the deviation? He looked at Freddie and said low and bitterly: "Freddie Miles, you're a victim of your own dirty mind. — Patricia Highsmith

Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable. — Patricia Highsmith

A classic is something with a human situation. — Patricia Highsmith

For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not. — Patricia Highsmith

I don't want to know movie directors. I don't want to be close to them. I don't want to interfere with their work. I don't want them to interfere with mine. — Patricia Highsmith

Don't you want to forget it, if it's past?"
"I don't know. I don't know just how you mean that."
"I mean, are you sorry?"
"No. Would I do the same thing again? Yes."
"Do you mean with somebody else, or with her?"
"With her," Therese said. — Patricia Highsmith

She thought of people she had seen holding hands in movies, and why shouldn't she and Carol? — Patricia Highsmith

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 looked like. Neither she nor Carol looked like that. Yet the way she felt about Carol passed all the tests for love and fitted all the descriptions. — Patricia Highsmith

Then he said, "That's a long way from stage designing, isn't it." She nodded. "Quite a long way." She started to ask him if he intended to do any work pertaining to the atom bomb, but she didn't, because what would it matter if he did or didn't? — Patricia Highsmith

If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies. — Patricia Highsmith

An inarticulate anxiety, a desire to know, know anything, for certain, had jammed itself in her throat so for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe. Do you think, do you think, it began. Do you think both of us will die violently someday, be suddenly shut off? But even that question wasn't definite enough. Perhaps it was a statement after all: I don't want to die yet without knowing you. Do you feel the same way, Carol? She could have uttered the last question, but she could not have said all that went before it. — Patricia Highsmith

Hate had begun to paralyze his thinking, he realized, to make little blind alleys of the roads that logic had pointed out to him in New York. — Patricia Highsmith

In the middle of the block, she opened the door of a coffee shop, but they were playing one of the songs she had heard with Carol everywhere, and she let the door close and walked on. The music lived, but the world was dead. And the song would die one day, she thought, but how would the world come back to life? How would its salt come back? — Patricia Highsmith

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

Don't you know I love you?' Carol said. — Patricia Highsmith

A terrible silence fell in the room. Bill Ireton looked suddenly sober as a trout. — Patricia Highsmith

She probably had all the time in the world, Therese thought, probably did nothing all day but what she felt like doing. — Patricia Highsmith

A few years ago, there were requests to me, Can we make this? I said that I have no rights. Contact the Hitchcock estate, which won't release it for a remake. — Patricia Highsmith

Death was only one more adventure untried. — Patricia Highsmith

An Italian woman came out of the house, wiping her hands on her apron.
'Mr Greenleaf?' Tom asked hopefully.
The woman gave him a long, smiling answer in Italian and pointed downward toward the sea. 'Jew,' she seemed to keep saying. 'Jew. — Patricia Highsmith

She wanted two weeks of working among people she didn't know, doing the kind of work a million other people did. She wanted to step into someone else's shoes. She — Patricia Highsmith

But even that question wasn't definite enough. Perhaps it was a statement after all: I don't want to die yet without knowing you. — Patricia Highsmith

I have no television - I hate it. — Patricia Highsmith

I had depressing thoughts that the theme, even though I had thought of it, was better than I was as a writer. Henry James or Thomas Mann could easily write it, but not I. 'I'm thinking of writing it from the point of view of someone at the hotel who observes her,' I said, but this did not fill me with much hope. Then my friend, who is not a writer, suggested I try it from the omniscient author's point of view. — Patricia Highsmith

And everything was made of paper: sentences, pardons, pleas, bad records, demerits, proof of guilt, but never, it seemed, proof of innocence. If there were no paper, Carter felt, the entire judicial system would collapse and disappear. — Patricia Highsmith

There was something demoniacal and insuperable about typographical errors, as if they were part of the natural evil that permeated man's existence, as if they had a life of their own and were determined to manifest themselves no matter what, as surely as weeds in the best-tended gardens. — Patricia Highsmith

Then Carol slipped her arm under her neck, and all the length of their bodies touched fitting as if something had prearranged it. Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered — Patricia Highsmith

My mistake was in telling a stranger my private business. — Patricia Highsmith

I won't ever set the world on fire as a painter,' Dickie said, 'but I get a great deal of pleasure out of it. — Patricia Highsmith

I know you have it in you, Guy," Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy. — Patricia Highsmith