Patricia Highsmith
27 quotes
Biography
"My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people."
"Robert Walker as Bruno was excellent. He had elegance and humor, and the proper fondness for his mother."
"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."
"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."
"What chance combination of shadow and sound and his own thoughts had created it?"
"I don’t want to know movie directors."
"I have no television – I hate it"
"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."
"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."
"For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not."
"I do not understand people who like to make noise; consequently I fear them, and since I fear them, I hate them."
"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."
"I read, write and create. I must lose myself in work, so that there is no space for the other/anything else."
"Fantasy, an unflagging optimism is necessary for a writer at all stages of this rough game. A kind of madness is therefore necessary, when there is every logical reason for a state of depression and discouragement. Perhaps the fact that I can react with utter gloom to this is what keeps me from being psychotic and keeps me merely neurotic. I am doing quite a good day's work today. But I am also aware of the madness that actually sustains me, and I am not made more comfortable or happy by it."
"One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness."
"I have been sadder than any man could be: for nothing in the world was made for me."
"Each person carries around in himself a terrible other world of hell and the unknown. It is an enormous pit reaching below the deepest crater of the earth, or it is the thinnest air far beyond the moon. But it is frightening and essentially “unlike” man as he knows himself familiarly, so we spend all our days living at the other antipodes of ourself."
"What immense satisfaction it must be to fashion a story like [Maupassant's]! One must say 'fashion' because it is not merely writing, but massing and cutting away like a sculptor, chiseling lean and clear. And to put one's work confidently in the crucible of Time; to know that in six perfect pages is the finest form of one's idea: This satisfaction is the only true reward of the artist, and this his highest possible joy on Earth."
"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."
"Obsessions are the only things that matter."
"Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable."
"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."
"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."