Quotes from Patricia Highsmith

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

The night was a time for bestial affinities, for drawing closer to oneself.

Was life, were human relations like this always, Therese wondered. Never solid ground underfoot. Always like gravel, a little yielding, noisy so the whole world could hear, so one always listened, too, for the loud, harsh step of the intruder's foot.

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.

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.

How easy it was to lie when one had to lie!

I think friendships are the result of certain needs that can be completely hidden from both people, sometimes hidden forever.

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.

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

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.

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

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

One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.

She had seen just now what she had only sensed before, that the whole world was ready to be their enemy, and suddenly what she and Carol had together seemed no longer love or anything happy but a monster between them, with each of them caught in a fist.

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.

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

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.

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-

A kiss, for instance, is not to be minimized, or its value judged by anyone else. I wonder do these men grade their pleasure in terms of whether their actions produce a child or not, and do they consider them more pleasant if they do. It is a question of pleasure after all, and what's the use of debating the pleasure of an ice cream cone versus a football game — or a Beethoven quartet versus the Mona Lisa. I'll leave that to the philosophers.

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

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

A rush of panic comforted him with its familiarity.

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.

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.