Patricia Highsmith Quotes

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

Everything human is alien to me.

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

Each book is, in a sense, an argument with myself, and I would write it, whether it is ever published or not.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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 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?

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

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.

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.

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

Every man is his own law court and punishes himself enough.

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

I prefer to live in the country where it's quiet. Woody Allen movies there are dubbed into Italian.

Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.

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

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

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.

I can't write if someone else is in the house, not even the cleaning woman.

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

I know you have it in you, Guy," Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy.

I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches

I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial.

That wasn't a bad price for a first book. My agent upped it as much as possible. I was 27 and had nothing behind me. I was working like a fool to earn a living and pay for my apartment

The conversation seemed just as boring and forgettable as details of American history around 1805, for example.

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

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

The justice I have received, I shall give back.

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

He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.

I have no television - I hate it.

I didn't hang around films. I don't know if I'd ever seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.

Once a person has become detached from his possessions, his customary duties, his moments of solitude, where is he? What is he?

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

I know you have it in you, Guy, " Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy.

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?

I have a definite psychosis in being with people. I cannot bear it very long.

one blow in anger [would] kill, probably, a child from aged two to eight. Those over eight would take two blows to kill.

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

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

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

I have been sadder than any man could be: for nothing in the world was made for me.

One interesting thing is that a stage is reached when nothing hurts any more. Things cannot become any worse, finally, for the one who is really depressed.

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.

I tell him his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication.