Quotes from Patricia Highsmith

The tragedy was not even the first drink, because the first drink was not the first resort but the last. There'd had to be first the failure of everything else—of her and Sam, of his friends, of his hope, of his interests, really.

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

There's no such thing as a perfect murder," Tom said to Reeves. "That's just a parlor game, trying to dream one up. Of course you could say there are a lot of unsolved murders. That's different.

It was a kind of arrogance, perhaps, to believe so in one's destiny. But, on the other hand, who could be more genuinely humble than one who felt compelled to obey the laws of his own fate?

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.

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.

My mistake was in telling a stranger my private business.

He had such slow reactions to everything. Physical danger. Emotional blows. Sometimes his reactions were weeks late, so that

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.

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

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.

A book is a really long continuous process, which ideally, should be interrupted only by sleep.

I know that Southern redhead type," Bruno said, poking at his apple pie.

It is then good to remember that artists have existed and persisted, like the snail and coelacanth and other changing forms of organic life since long before governments were dreamed of.

world comes to realize what I felt going up the hill, then there'll be a kind of right economy of living and of using and using up. Do you know what I mean?" Dannie had clenched his fist, but his eyes were bright as if he still laughed at himself. "Did you ever wear out a sweater

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

And when all's said and done, the final comment will be (from me at least) so what? I'll live with my neuroses. I'll try to develop patience, with my handicapped personality. But I prefer to live with my neuroses and try to make the best of them.

Beyond Sicily came Greece. He definitely wanted to see Greece. He wanted to see Greece as Dickie Greenleaf with Dickie's money, Dickie's clothes, Dickie's way of behaving with strangers. But would it happen that he couldn't see Greece as Dickie Greenleaf? Would one thing after another come up to thwart him—murder, suspicion, people? He hadn't wanted to murder, it had been a necessity.

Every failure teaches something. 12

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

He had actually been to weak even to leave the hotel, but he had crawled around on the floor of his room, following the patches of sunlight that came through his windows, so that he wouldn't look so white the next time he came down to the beach.

If you wanted to be cheerful, or melancholic, or wistful, or thoughtful, or courteous, you simply

The train tore along with an angry, irregular rhythm.

Some things don't react. But everything's alive.