Patricia Highsmith Quotes

And everything was made of paper: sentences, pardons, pleas, bad records, demerits, proof of guilt, but never, it seemed, proof of innocence. If there were no paper, Carter felt, the entire judicial system would collapse and disappear.

~ Patricia Highsmith

He did look like an Italian of the worse type, though Vic didn't think he was, and it was an insult to the Italian race to assume that he was. He resembled no particular race, only an amalgamation of the worst elements of various Latin peoples. He looked as if he had spent all his life dodging blows that were probably aimed at him for good reason.

~ Patricia Highsmith

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

~ Patricia Highsmith

For the hundredth time, he examined his face in the bathroom mirror, patiently touched every scratch with the styptic pencil, and repowdered them. He ministered to his face and hands objectively, as if they were not a part of himself. When his eyes met the staring eyes in the mirror, they slipped away as they must have slipped away, Guy thought, that first afternoon on the train, when he had tried to avoid Bruno’s eyes.

~ Patricia Highsmith

It shook Therese in the profoundest part of her where no words were, no easy words like death or dying or killing Those words were somehow future, and this was present. An inarticulate anxiety, a desire to know, know anything for certain, had jammed itself in her throat for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe.

~ Patricia Highsmith

Perhaps it was a statement after all: I don’t want to die without knowing you. Do you feel the same way, Carol? She could have said the last question, but she could not have said all that went before it.

~ Patricia Highsmith

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

She thought of people she had seen holding hands in movies, and why shouldn't she and Carol?

~ Patricia Highsmith

Do people always fall in love with things they can't have?''Always,' Carol said, smiling, too.

~ Patricia Highsmith

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

~ Patricia Highsmith

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

~ Patricia Highsmith