Patricia Highsmith quotes

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist best known for her psychological thrillers and crime fiction. Her works, including "Strangers on a Train" and the Ripley series, explore themes of identity, morality, and obsession. She captivated readers with her complex characters and dark, suspenseful storytelling. Here are 46 of her quotes:

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people. (Patricia Highsmith)

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

Patricia Highsmith

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

Patricia Highsmith

I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find in other ways.

Patricia Highsmith

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

Patricia Highsmith

I only know it takes weeks to recover, as if one had been in a car accident.

Patricia Highsmith

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

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

Patricia Highsmith

Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.

Patricia Highsmith

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

Patricia Highsmith

Do people always fall in love with things they can't have?'

'Always,' Carol said, smiling, too. (Patricia Highsmith)

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?

Patricia Highsmith

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

Patricia Highsmith

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.

Patricia Highsmith

The justice I have received, I shall give back.

Patricia Highsmith

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

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

Patricia Highsmith

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

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

Patricia Highsmith

I have no television - I hate it.

Patricia Highsmith

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)

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

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

Patricia Highsmith

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.

Patricia Highsmith

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

Patricia Highsmith

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Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith - Image

Photo: Open Media Ltd, CC BY-SA 3.0

Occupation: American Novelist
Born: January 19, 1921
Died: February 4, 1995
Quotes count: 46

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