Quotes from Patricia Highsmith

A book is not a thing of one sitting, like a poem, but a longish thing which takes time and energy and since it takes skill, too, the first effort or maybe the second may not find a market.

write down all those slender ideas.

During the ten-day voyage Tom lived in a peculiar atmosphere of doom and of heroic, unselfish courage. He imagined strange things: Mrs. Cartwright's daughter falling overboard and he jumping after her and saving her. Or fighting through the waters of a ruptured bulkhead to close the breach with his own body. He felt possessed of a preternatural strength and fearlessness.

My story can move fast, as I can't, it can have a reasonable and perhaps perfect solution, as mine can't. A solution that is somehow satisfying, as my personal solution never can be.

The anxiety has always been within himself, a battle of himself against himself, so tortuous he might have welcomed the law's intervention.

Besides, it isn't appropriate for a man to divorce his wife. She should divorce him. – Victor Van Allen

and the night became another of those islands in time, suspended somewhere in the heart or in the memory, intact and absolute.

Flung out of space

Y qué era el luto? Cara larga durante una hora, un dia…pero no mucho más…(…) Pero ¿por lo demás? Coleman no se hacia ilusiones en el sentido de que por él iban a derrarmarse muchas lágrimas. El luto era algo reservado a un puñado de amigos verdaderos, o a las familias unidas que lo guardaban principalmente para que lo viera el resto de lal familia.

At dawn, after my death hours before, The sunlight will spread at seven o'clock as usual On these trees which I know. Greenness will burst, dark green shadows yield To the cruel-benign, indifferent sun. Indifferent will stand the trees in my own garden, Unweeping for me on the morning of my death. Same as ever, roots athirst, The trees will rest in breezeless dawn, Blind and uncaring, The trees that I knew, That I tended.

It was important that the objects of love be nothing but recipients, he thought again. Love was an outgoing thing, a gift that one should not expect to be returned. Stendhall must have said that, Proust certainly, using other words: a piece of wisdom his eyes had passed over reading.

La fiebre estimula la imaginación.

Therese Belivet: I never asked for anything! Maybe that's the problem!

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

Carol: My angel, flung out of space.

Ser incapaz de amar puede convertirse en una enfermedad, ¿no crees?

Not that I am conservative, but did you know that one drink has the kick of three when you are alone?

I say I love you always, the person you are and the person you will become.

I think people's lives are there own.

Cuando regresé a la Universidad me fui a vivir con un amigo, un compañero de estudios. Se llamaba Kermit. Vivía cerca del colegio con su familia. Tenía un hermano y una hermana menores que él y aquella casa era un caos.—Robert sonrió—. Pero era un hogar, ¿comprendes? No, no puedes comprenderlo si nunca has carecido de uno verdadero.

Yes, I have sunk a good deal since they took you from me.

One simply cannot concern oneself eight or even five hours a day with nonsense-taken-seriously and not be corrupted by it. The corruption lies in the very habits of thought.

Carol, te quiero. Carol se irguió. Therese la miró con sus ojos intensos y adormilados. Carol acabo de sacar su pijama de la maleta y bajó la tapa. Se acerco a Therese y le puso las manos en los hombros. Se los apretó con fuerza, como si le exigiera una promesa, o quizá intentado averiguar si lo habia dicho de verdad. Luego la besó en los labios como si ya se hubieran besado millones de veces. - ¿Tú no sabes que te quiero?- dijo Carol.

Tren, öfkeli bir zang?rt? tutturmuÅŸ gidiyordu.