Highsmith Quotes & Sayings

There are three particularly important issues involved in delivering customer value: focusing on innovation rather than efficiency and optimization, concentrating on execution, and lean thinking. — Jim Highsmith

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

He remembered that right after that, he had stolen a loaf of bread from a delicatessen counter and had taken it home and devoured it, feeling that the world owed a loaf of bread to him, and more. — Patricia Highsmith

I was in New York. Hitchcock was in California. He rang me to make a report on his progress and said, I'm having trouble. I've just sacked my second screenwriter. — Patricia Highsmith

There were many times when logic was of no comfort. — 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

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

If we want to build great products, we need great people. If we want to attract and keep great people, we need great principles — Jim 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

Their eyes met at the same instant moment, Therese glancing up from a box she was opening, and the woman just turning her head so she looked directly at Therese. She was tall and fair, her long figure graceful in the loose fur coat that she held open with a hand on her waist, her eyes were grey, colorless, yet dominant as light or fire, and, caught by them, Therese could not look away. She heard the customer in front of her repeat a question, and Therese stood there, mute. The woman was looking at Therese, too, with a preoccupied expression, as if half her mind were on whatever is was she meant to buy here, and though there were a number of salesgirls between them, There felt sure the woman would come to her, Then, Then Therese saw her walk slowly towards the counter, heard her heart stumble to catch up with the moment it had let pass, and felt her face grow hot as the woman came nearer and nearer. — Patricia Highsmith

The best way to get a project done faster is to start sooner — Jim Highsmith

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

In a self-organized team, individuals take accountability for managing their own workload, shift work among themselves based on need and best fit, and take responsibility for team effectiveness. Team members have considerable leeway in how they deliver results, they are self-disciplined in their accountability for those results, and they work within a flexible framework. — Jim Highsmith

When I am thickening my plots, I like to think 'What if ... What if ... ' Thus my imagination can move from the likely, which everyone can think of, to the unlikely-but-possible, my preferred plot. — Patricia Highsmith

Dusk was falling quickly. It was just after 7 P.M., and the month was October. — Patricia Highsmith

She tried to keep her voice steady, but it was pretense, like pretending self-control when something you loved was dead in front of your eyes. They would have to separate here. — 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

For here it was now, as clear as it had ever been. And, worst of all, he was aware of an impulse to tell Bruno everything, the stranger on the train who would listen, commiserate, and forget. The idea of telling Bruno began to comfort him. Bruno was not the ordinary stranger on the train by any means. He was cruel and corrupt enough himself to appreciate a story like that of his first love. — Patricia Highsmith

He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with. They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn't that worth something? He existed. Not many people in the world knew how to, even if they had the money. It really didn't take money, masses of money, it took a certain security. — 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

The kiss became the narrowed center of the still point of the turning world, so that even the park was turning in comparison to the still peace at their lips. — Patricia Highsmith

Creating new products and services differs from making minor enhancements to existing ones. The first must focus on innovation and adaptability, whereas the second usually focuses on efficiency and optimization. Efficiency delivers products and services that we can think of. Innovation delivers products that we can barely imagine. Efficiency and optimization are appropriate drivers for a production project, whereas innovation and creativity should drive an exploration-type project. A production mindset can restrict our vision to what appears doable. An exploration mindset helps us explore what seems impossible. — Jim 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

Dialogue, discussion, and participatory decision making are all part of building self-discipline. — Jim Highsmith

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

In an agile project the team takes care of the tasks and the project leader takes care of the team. — Jim Highsmith

How indifferent he was to Carol after all, Therese thought. She felt he didn't see her, as he sometimes hadn't seen figures in rock or cloud formations when she had tried to point them out to him. — 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

Carol was like a secret spreading through her. — Highsmith, Patricia

Fantasy, an unflagging optimism is necessary for a writer at all stages of this rough game. A kind of madness is therefore necessary, when there is every logical reason for a state of depression and discouragement. Perhaps the fact that I can react with utter gloom to this is what keeps me from being psychotic and keeps me merely neurotic. I am doing quite a good day's work today. But I am also aware of the madness that actually sustains me, and I am not made more comfortable or happy by it. — Patricia Highsmith

I'm going to enjoy what I've got as long as it lasts. — Patricia Highsmith

Self-discipline is also built on competence, persistence, and the willingness to assume accountability for results. Competence is more than skill and ability; it's attitude and experience. — Jim 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

The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later. — 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

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

Finally, Carol said in a tone of hopelessness, "Darling, can I ask you to forgive me?"
The tone hurt Therese more than the question. "I love you, Carol."
"But do you see what it means? — Patricia Highsmith

[Patricia Highsmith] was a figure of contradictions: a lesbian who didn't particularly like women; a writer of the most insightful psychological novels who, at times, appeared bored by people; a misanthrope with a gentle, sweet nature. — Andrew Wilson

But love and hate, he thought now, good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it all, one had merely to scratch the surface. All things had opposites close by, every decision a reason against it, every animal an animal that destroys it, the male the female, the positive the negative ... Nothing could be without its opposite bound up with it. Could space exist in a building without objects that stopped it? Could energy exist without matter, or matter without energy? Matter and energy, the inert and the active, once considered opposites, were now known to be one. — 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

She had the kind of face that must be seen in action to be attractive. — Patricia Highsmith

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

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? — 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

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

If you have unskilled people who work poorly together, no amount of process will save your projects. — Jim Highsmith

Self-organizing teams form the core of APM. They blend freedom and responsibility, flexibility and structure. In the face of inconsistency and ambiguity, the teams strive to consistently deliver on the product vision within the project constraints. Accomplishing this requires teams with a self-organizing structure and self-disciplined individual team members. Building this kind of team is the core of an agile project leader's job. — Jim 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

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

Only experience can refine a leader's art. High-uncertainty projects are full of anxiety, change, and ambiguity that the team must deal with. It takes a different style of project management, a different pattern of team operation, and a different type of project leader. I've labeled this type of management leadership-collaboration. — Jim Highsmith

Agile methods don't attempt to describe everything that any development effort might need in thousands of pages of documentation. Instead they describe a minimal set of activities that are needed to create swarm intelligence. — Jim Highsmith

It was easy, after all, simply to open the door and escape. It was easy, she thought, because she was not really escaping at all. — Patricia Highsmith

Nom de Plume uses the device of the pseudonym to unite the likes of Charlotte Bronte, Mark Twain, Fernando Pessoa, and Patricia Highsmith into a cohesive yet highly idiosyncratic literary history. Each page affords sparkling facts and valuable insights onto the manufacturing of books and reputations, the keeping and revealing of secrets, the vagaries of private life and public opinion, and the eternally mysterious, often tormented interface between life and literature. — Elif Batuman

You ask if I miss you. I think of your voice, your hands, and your eyes when you look straight into mine. I remember your courage that I hadn't suspected, and it gives me courage. — Patricia Highsmith

The feature delivery approach helps define a workable interface between customers and product developers. — Jim Highsmith

He could feel the belligerence growing in Freddie Miles as surely as if his huge body were generating a heat that he could feel across the room. — 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

What else mattered except being with Carol, anywhere, anyhow? — 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

Driving exploration is critical, but knowing when to stop is also. Product development is exploring with a purpose, delivering value within a set of constraints. Frequent, timeboxed iterations compel the development and product teams and executives to make difficult tradeoff decisions early and often during the project. Feature delivery contributes to realistic evaluations because product managers can look at tangible, verifiable results. — Jim Highsmith

Thinking no more about it, he stepped off into that cool space, that fast descent to her, with nothing in his mind but a memory of a curve of her shoulder, naked, as he had never seen it. — 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

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 was propped up on one elbow. The milk was so hot, she could barely let her lip touch it at first. The tiny sips spread inside her mouth and released a melange of organic flavors. The milk seemed to taste of bone and blood, of warm flesh, or hair, saltless as chalk yet alive as a growing embryo. It was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup, and Therese drank it down, as people in fairy tales drink the potion that will transform, or the unsuspecting warrior the cup that will kill, Then Carol came and took the cup, and Therese was drowsily aware that Carol asked her three questions, on that had to do with happiness, one about the store and one about the future. Therese heard herself answering. She heard her voice rise suddenly in a babble, like a spring that she had no control over, and she realized she was in tears. She was telling Carol all that she feared and disliked, of her loneliness, of Richard, and of gigantic disappointments. — Patricia Highsmith

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 reason somewhere. I think even the poets would agree with me. — Patricia Highsmith

What chance combination of shadow and sound and his own thoughts had created it? — Patricia Highsmith

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

But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves. — Patricia Highsmith

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

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

By the time I got to college I had stopped reading books because I wanted to "be cool" and started reading books simply because I wanted to read them. I discovered heroes like Roth, King, Dahl, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, TC Boyle, Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, David Sedaris. These people weren't trying to "rebel against the literary establishment." They were trying to write great, high-quality books that were as entertaining and moving as possible. — Simon Rich

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

The world that spun from the web of her imagination was manifestly more real to [Patricia Highsmith] than what she saw before her. It was as if, like her fiction, she inhabited a paraxial region, and area which, like one of the working titles for Strangers on a Train, could be said to lie at 'The Other Side of the Mirror'. — Andrew Wilson

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

We live in an age in which the volume of available information stupefies us. On any relatively interesting subject we can find thousands of Web pages, tens - if not hundreds - of books, and article after article. How do we filter all this information? How do we process all this information? Core values and principles provide one mechanism for processing and filtering information. They steer us in the direction of what is more, or less, important. They help us make product decisions and evaluate development practices. — Jim Highsmith

But Carol had not betrayed her. Carol loved her more than she loved her child. That was part of the reason why she had not promised.
She was gambling now as she had gambled on getting everything from the detective that day on the road, and she lost then, too. And now she saw Carol's face changing, saw the little signs of astonishment and shock so subtle that perhaps only she in the world could have noticed them, and Therese could not think for a moment. — 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

The headwaiter said something to her in the foyer, and she told him, "I'm looking for somebody," and went on to the doorway. She stood in the doorway, looking over the people at the tables in the room where a piano played. — Patricia Highsmith

The mere thought that she was alone and surrounded by books gave her a near-sensuous thrill. As she looked around her room, dark escaper for the slash of light near her lamp, and saw the vague outlines of her books, she asked herself 'Have I not the whole world? — Andrew Wilson

Agility is the ability to balance flexibility and stability — Jim Highsmith

Process is not a substitute for skill. — Jim Highsmith

Kick me out, she thought. What was in or out? How did one kick out an emotion? — Patricia Highsmith

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

Leaders who want to create adaptive, self-organizing teams steer rather than control - they influence, nudge, facilitate, teach, recommend, assist, urge, counsel, and, yes, direct in some instances. — Jim Highsmith

This is what I like, sitting at a table and watching people go by. It does something to your outlook on life. The Anglo-Saxons make a great mistake not staring at people from a sidewalk table. — Patricia Highsmith

Agile project leaders help their team balance at the edge of chaos - some structure, but not too much; adequate documentation, but not too much; some up-front architecture work, but not too much. Finding these balance points is the "art" of agile leadership. — Jim 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 iterative piece of agile can be defined by four key terms: iterative, feature-based, timeboxed, and incremental. — Jim Highsmith

APM's core purpose of creating innovative new products and services means dealing with constant technological and competitive change, generating novel ideas, and continually reducing product development schedules. — Jim 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

Who am I, anyway? Does one exist, or to what extent does one exist as an individual without friends, family, anybody to whom one can relate, to whom one's existence is of the least importance? — Patricia Highsmith

Miss Highsmith is the poet of apprehension rather than fear. Fear after a time, as we all learned in the blitz, is narcotic, it can lull one by fatigue into sleep, but apprehension nags at the nerves gently and inescapably. We have to learn to live with it. — Patricia Highsmith

The word "marriage" lingered in Guy's ears, too. It was a solemn word to him. It had the primordial solemnity of holy, love, sin. It was Miriam's round terra cotta-coloured mouth saying, "Why should I put myself out for you?" and it was Anne's eyes as she pushed her hair back and looked up at him on the lawn of her house where she planted crocuses. It was Miriam turning from the tall thin window in the room in Chicago, lifting her freckled, shield-shaped face directly up to his as she always did before she told a lie, and Steve's long dark head, insolently smiling. — Patricia Highsmith

Optimization implies that we already know how to do something but that we now need to improve it. Innovation implies that we don't know how to do something, and searching for that knowledge is paramount. — Jim Highsmith

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

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

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

The capability of self-organizing teams lies in collaboration. When two engineers scratch out a design on a whiteboard, they are collaborating. When team members meet to brainstorm a design, they are collaborating. When team leaders meet to decide whether a product is ready to ship, they are collaborating. The result of any collaboration can be categorized as a tangible deliverable, a decision, or shared knowledge. — Jim Highsmith

In view of the fact that I surround myself with numbskulls now, I shall die among numbskulls, and on my deathbed shall be surrounded by numbskulls who will not understand what I am saying ... Whom am I sleeping with these days ? Franz Kafka. — Patricia Highsmith