Quotes from Patricia Highsmith

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

I only know it takes weeks to recover, as if one had been in a car accident.

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

Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.

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

I have Graham Greene's telephone number, but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone.

I only know it takes weeks to recover, as if one had been in a car accident.

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

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

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

I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me.

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

Obsessions are the only things that matter.

My New Year's Eve Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace.

It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.

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.

Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It always gets late with you. - Is that a compliment?

I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find in other ways.