Patricia Highsmith > Quotes

“My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“I feel I stand in a desert with my hands outstretched, and you are raining down upon me.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

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

'Always,' Carol said, smiling, too.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“Obsessions are the only things that matter.”
― 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

“It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“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, The Price of Salt

“January. It was all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory: [...]Every human action seemed to yield a magic. January was a two-faced month, jangling like jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“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, The Price of Salt

“Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“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, The Price of Salt

“Was it love or wasn't it that she felt for Carol? And how absurd it was that she didn't even know. She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they looked like. Neither she nor Carol looked like that. Yet the way she felt about Carol passed all the tests for love and fitted all the descriptions.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“But there was not a moment when she did not see Carol in her mind, and all she saw, she seemed to see through Carol. That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. She flung herself on her bed and drew a line with a pencil on a piece of paper. And another line, carefully, and another. A world was born around her, like a bright forest with a million shimmering leaves.”
― Patricia Highsmith, Carol

“Then Carol slipped her arm under her neck, and all the length of their bodies touched fitting as if something had prearranged it. Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“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, The Price of Salt

“It always gets late with you. - Is that a compliment?”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“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 Talented Mr. Ripley

“My angel," Carold said. "Flung out of space.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“They were not friends. They didn't know each other. It struck Tom like a horrible truth, true for all time, true for the people he had known in the past and for those he would know in the future: each had stood and would stand before him, and he would know time and time again that he would never know them, and the worst was that there would always be the illusion, for a time, that he did know them, and that he and they were completely in harmony and alike. For an instant the wordless shock of his realization seemed more than he could bear.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

“I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find in other ways.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“Carol raised her hand slowly and brushed her hair back, once on either side, and Therese smiled because the gesture was Carol, and it was Carol she loved and would always love. Oh, in a different way now because she was a different person, and it was like meeting Carol all over again, but it was still Carol and no one else. It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell. Therese waited. Then as she was about to go to her, Carol saw her, seemed to stare at her incredulously a moment while Therese watched the slow smile growing, before her arm lifted suddenly, her hand waved a quick, eager greeting that Therese had never seen before. Therese walked toward her.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“She thought of people she had seen holding hands in movies, and why shouldn't she and Carol?”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with. They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn't that worth something? He existed. Not many people in the world knew how to, even if they had the money. It really didn't take money, masses of money, it took a certain security.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

“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, Strangers on a Train

“What a strange girl you are.”
“Why?”
“Flung out of space,” Carol said.”
― Patricia Highsmith

“Her life was a series of zigzags. At nineteen, she was anxious.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“Do you like her'
''Of course!' What a question! Like asking her if she believe in God.”
― Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

“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, The Price of Salt