Top 100 Patricia Highsmith Quotes

#1. Some fellow from the Third World kept hammering for prizes for a Communist film which was rotten.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #17073
#2. The justice I have received, I shall give back.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #37265
#3. Though all we have known is only a beginning.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #70097
#4. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #99060
#5. I didn't hang around films. I don't know if I'd ever seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #125298
#6. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #190176
#7. Nothing was true but the fatigue of life and the eternal disappointment.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #193256
#8. Death was only one more adventure untried.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #200059
#9. Ripley is married. And he's not lost. He has his feet on the ground.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #207088
#10. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #208363
#11. He remembered that right after that, he had stolen a loaf of bread from a delicatessen counter and had taken it home and devoured it, feeling that the world owed a loaf of bread to him, and more.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #252190
#12. I like to drink when I travel. It enhances things, don't you think?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #270634
#13. And wished with all her power to wish anything, that the woman would simply continue her last words and say, "Are you really so glad to have met me? Then why can't we see each other again? Why can't we even have lunch together today?" Her voice was so casual, and she might have said it so easily.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #270842
#14. A terrible silence fell in the room. Bill Ireton looked suddenly sober as a trout.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #305173
#15. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #424845
#16. I tell him his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #436720
#17. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #456908
#18. Hate had begun to paralyze his thinking, he realized, to make little blind alleys of the roads that logic had pointed out to him in New York.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #461797
#19. The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #481972
#20. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #579741
#21. Don't you know I love you?' Carol said.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #588405
#22. Kick me out, she thought. What was in or out? How did one kick out an emotion?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #602042
#23. If you wanted to be cheerful, or melancholic, or wistful , or thoughtful, or courteous, you simply had to act those things with every gesture.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #635293
#24. He felt he was about to experience again some ancient, delicious childhood moment that the steam calliope's sour hollowness, the stitching hurdy-gurdy accompaniment, and the drum-and-cymbal crash brought almost to the margin of his grasp.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #636662
#25. I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find in other ways.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #644659
#26. Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #671511
#27. I do not understand people who like to make noise; consequently I fear them, and since I fear them, I hate them.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #686563
#28. And no book, and possibly no painting, when it is finished, is ever exactly like the first dream of it.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #686947
#29. I think there's a definite reason for every friendship just as there's a reason why certain atoms unite and others don't - certain missing factors in one, or certain present factors in the other

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #696225
#30. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #701996
#31. What a strange girl you are." "Why?" "Flung out of space," Carol said.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #712061
#32. A rush of panic comforted him with its familiarity.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #719587
#33. Do people always fall in love with things they can't have?'
'Always,' Carol said, smiling, too.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #739507
#34. I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy, and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #753599
#35. Tom envied him with a heartbreaking surge of envy and self-pity.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #754306
#36. I don't think Ripley is gay. He appreciates good looks in other men, that's true. But he's married in later books. I'm not saying he's very strong in the sex department. But he makes it in bed with his wife.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #788099
#37. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #788740
#38. It was easy, after all, simply to open the door and escape. It was easy, she thought, because she was not really escaping at all.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #795250
#39. I know that Southern redhead type, Bruno said, poking at his apple pie.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #799933
#40. But when they kissed goodnight in bed, Therese felt their sudden release, that leap of response in both of them, as if their bodies were of some materials which put together inevitably created desire.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #838074
#41. I'm going to enjoy what I've got as long as it lasts.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #850803
#42. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #851245
#43. Something always turned up. That was Tom's philosophy.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #869251
#44. For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #879093
#45. Carol looked at her. "How do you become a poet?"
"By feeling things - too much, I suppose," Therese answered conscientiously.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #897770
#46. Do you like her'
'Of course!' What a question! Like asking her if she believe in God.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #928448
#47. I won't ever set the world on fire as a painter,' Dickie said, 'but I get a great deal of pleasure out of it.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #955850
#48. I hope it will be set in California. In a way, I made a mistake, because a New Jersey policeman can't operate that way in New York. But in California, he can move between different counties.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #989582
#49. I know you have it in you, Guy," Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1026694
#50. Who am I, anyway? Does one exist, or to what extent does one exist as an individual without friends, family, anybody to whom one can relate, to whom one's existence is of the least importance?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1028697
#51. I have been sadder than any man could be: for nothing in the world was made for me.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1102178
#52. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1104856
#53. I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1111217
#54. One blow in anger [would] kill, probably, a child from aged two to eight. Those over eight would take two blows to kill.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1111403
#55. I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1113767
#56. The night was a time for bestial affinities, for drawing closer to oneself.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1136708
#57. Thinking no more about it, he stepped off into that cool space, that fast descent to her, with nothing in his mind but a memory of a curve of her shoulder, naked, as he had never seen it.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1151185
#58. Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1160666
#59. Don't you want to forget it, if it's past?"
"I don't know. I don't know just how you mean that."
"I mean, are you sorry?"
"No. Would I do the same thing again? Yes."
"Do you mean with somebody else, or with her?"
"With her," Therese said.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1207569
#60. The way to see the world was to see it drunk. Everything was created to be seen drunk.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1215446
#61. I'm not melancholic,' she protested, but the thin ice was under her feet again, the uncertainties. or was it that she always wanted a little more than she had, no matter how much she had?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1248535
#62. How indifferent he was to Carol after all, Therese thought. She felt he didn't see her, as he sometimes hadn't seen figures in rock or cloud formations when she had tried to point them out to him.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1261207
#63. He robs everyone

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1281169
#64. I have no television - I hate it.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1313616
#65. A classic is something with a human situation.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1337834
#66. Every man is his own law court and punishes himself enough.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1372704
#67. I got a theory a person ought to do everything it's possible to do before he dies, and maybe die trying to do something that's really impossible.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1374380
#68. It was the seventh or eighth floor, she couldn't remember which. A streetcar crawled past the front of the hotel, and people on the sidewalk moved in every direction, with legs on either side of them, and it crossed her mind to jump.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1377457
#69. She probably had all the time in the world, Therese thought, probably did nothing all day but what she felt like doing.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1386439
#70. Once a person has become detached from his possessions, his customary duties, his moments of solitude, where is he? What is he?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1425023
#71. Robert Walker as Bruno was excellent. He had elegance and humor, and the proper fondness for his mother.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1433052
#72. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1446106
#73. And the hopelessness of herself, of ever being the person she wanted to be and of doing the things that person would do. Had all her life been nothing but a dream, and was this real?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1449891
#74. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1451351
#75. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1453242
#76. He seems to be making you that way too - enough to tolerate people like him. And once you start tolerating them, you're going to end up being like them yourself.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1472294
#77. I have a definite psychosis in being with people. I cannot bear it very long.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1473800
#78. There were many times when logic was of no comfort.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1478275
#79. Did the world always mete out just deserts?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1553308
#80. It always gets late with you. - Is that a compliment?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1574807
#81. Mr Greenleaf was such a decent fellow himself, he took it for granted that everybody else in the world was decent, too. Tom had almost forgotten such people existed.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1592185
#82. What could be duller than past history!' Therese said, smiling. 'Maybe futures that won't have any history.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1638427
#83. How easy it was to lie when one had to lie!

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1660982
#84. Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1669317
#85. 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.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1669362
#86. Life is a long failure of understanding ... a long, mistaken shutting of the heart.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1718953
#87. What else mattered except being with Carol, anywhere, anyhow?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1729174
#88. I know what they'd like, they'd like a blank they could fill in. A person already filled in disturbs them terribly.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1753347
#89. Then he said, "That's a long way from stage designing, isn't it." She nodded. "Quite a long way." She started to ask him if he intended to do any work pertaining to the atom bomb, but she didn't, because what would it matter if he did or didn't?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1762330
#90. I think friendships are the result of certain needs that can be completely hidden from both people, sometimes hidden forever.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1778617
#91. I like to work for four or five hours a day. I aim for seven days a week.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1785085
#92. What chance combination of shadow and sound and his own thoughts had created it?

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1815512
#93. I should love to do a novel, about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1817578
#94. He could feel the belligerence growing in Freddie Miles as surely as if his huge body were generating a heat that he could feel across the room.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1822642
#95. An Italian woman came out of the house, wiping her hands on her apron.
'Mr Greenleaf?' Tom asked hopefully.
The woman gave him a long, smiling answer in Italian and pointed downward toward the sea. 'Jew,' she seemed to keep saying. 'Jew.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1834445
#96. Happiness was a little like flying, she thought, like being a kite. It depended on how much one let the string out.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1837219
#97. I prefer to live in the country where it's quiet. Woody Allen movies there are dubbed into Italian.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1839503
#98. Obsessions are the only things that matter.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1843919
#99. Dusk was falling quickly. It was just after 7 P.M., and the month was October.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1851305
#100. I am the forever-seeking.

Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith Quotes #1870704

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